Franz Ferdinand are still operating on an elevated plateau – Always Ascending, review (original) (raw)
Music Critic
09 February 2018 7:00am GMT
Franz Ferdinand’s fifth album is called Always Ascending, which suggests that the Scottish art-rock band are girded and bound for new career peaks. But is perpetual ascent even possible? It is a question that must haunt every artist, especially in the fickle world of popular music. Even the most glorious careers tend to be marked by periods of creative stasis and commercial decline.
Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos and his squad are willing to grapple with this dilemma, however. “Put your ladder down!” is one of the most insistent vocal motifs on a title track full of musical wit. It oscillates (quite literally, when it comes to the synth arrangement) between advocating perpetual progress (“Never gonna resolve!”) and accepting that things can’t always go up (“Don’t be concerned/ It’s just the way gravity works round here”).
The song both references and employs the Shepard Tone, an auditory trick where overlapping sine waves create an illusion of constantly rising pitch. You may need a degree in music theory to get the joke but not to surrender to the groove. Like the best of Franz Ferdinand’s output over 15 years, the track delights on a purely physical level as a slice of lithe, muscular disco rock.
Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos Credit: Getty Images
There has always been an almost student-like quality to this band that frames everything in irony. Yet this is also counterpointed by a genuine sense of dumb fun. They exploded from Glasgow in 2004 with audacious time-switching garage-rock anthem Take Me Out before picking up the Mercury Prize for their self-titled debut album.
Distinctive from the outset, they have only ever changed incrementally. They write clever songs peppered with cryptically articulated verses and arch, sloganeering choruses, slammed home with tight, tricky, syncopated rhythms, all bound with swathes of harmony. But what once seemed inspired now risks sounding formulaic.
Always Ascending is every bit as smart and dynamic as their acclaimed debut, but familiarity has dampened its dramatic impact. It seems churlish to criticise a band clearly operating on such an elevated plateau, yet it is hard to escape the feeling that they peaked a long time ago. Is that just an inevitable consequence of career longevity?
Like a lot of veteran bands, Franz Ferdinand have gone through personnel changes. Original guitarist Nick McCarthy has departed, to be replaced by two new members, guitarist Dino Bardot and, most intriguingly, Julian Corrie, an electronics wizard who makes experimental dance music as Miaoux Miaoux. It proves a surprisingly seamless integration, Corrie’s melodic keyboard lines and brash synth sounds dovetailing neatly with the usual interlocking guitars in what remain very linear, stratified, rhythm-centred arrangements.
It is all a little too neat, though. A future in which Corrie has the confidence to really warp the band’s trademark sound is hinted at in enticing moments such as the dreamily extended electro-disco coda to Feel the Love Go. More disruption like this might just be the rocket boost Franz Ferdinand need to regain that all important upward momentum.
Franz Ferdinand: Always Ascending is out now