Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand have returned, with 'Tonight: Franz Ferdinand' it comes as a bigger hit than what Katie Price's break up with Peter Andre was and we all knew that was coming.

But moving away from them, 'Tonight' is less surprising than the hype it got, it starts out in ordinary Franz Ferdinand fashion 'Ulysses' a catchy song. That's all it is. It's not like 'Take Me Out' or 'Do You Want To' as they had the instant catchy pop guitar hooks, especially in 'Take Me Out' as that was one of the best songs to appear in the early 2000's along with The White Stripes 'Seven Nation Army' and both songs were similar in a lot of ways. 'Ulysses' falters in some parts, it's badly put together, more like there was no effort put into it what-so-ever and the song writing is also weak on a consistent basis and the entire track itself, shows what Britain is lacking in many aspects of it's recent bands which is repetitiveness, predictability and most of all plain flat out boring to listen to degenerate copy-cat Indie Rock bands.

'Tonight' does briefly now and then show some light, although not much and shows some glimpses of Franz's early work which can be considered almost genius. In the short 2 minutes and 21 seconds of 'Turn It On' Franz display their guitar work which sounds similar to 'Cheating on You' which appeared on their debut album is definitely more worthy a lead single than 'Ulysses'.

The album progresses in it's obvious fashion, 'No You Girls' appears and no doubt you would have heard it in some night club or on the radio at work. The track achieves its purpose and that's by getting extensive radio and TV play, this is another song that expresses the problem with the British music scene at the moment, this song tries to replicate the sound on 'Take Me Out' and does sound like the entire band have no long term plan on which direction they want to take their music in and so they try to produce songs similar to their previous work which is just not cutting it.

Now, 'Tonight' does bring out an instant classic in it, probably not in the eyes of the mainstream but what I mean is, this is the best song Franz Ferdinand have ever constructed and that song is 'Lucid Dreams', nearly 8 minutes long and it starts out in calm manner as it peacefully strolls around in a park with pop fever and as that fades, in comes around three to four minutes of instant instrumental Electronic haze, which will fizzle your mind until it fries out and dries up and leave you wondering were you on an acid trip. The album also closes out in a nice sing-a-along fashion 'Katherine Kiss Me' is just a simple acoustic melody which Alex Kapranos sings to in his low voice which makes you fall in love with him and makes you ask 'Alex Kiss Me?'

Finally, 'Tonight' is a solid effort, considering 2005's 'You Could Have It So Much Better' wasn't well received but even at that, it flowed better than 'Tonight' which nearly everything was just replicated from it's predecessor, songs like 'Send Him Away', 'Twilight Omens' and 'Live Alone' really could have been left out and stuck in some vault and be released posthumously or something, because they don't even give of the 'filler' feel, they just bore you, because you simply think you've listened to these songs before from somewhere else. This album will also raise no eyebrows amongst music critics or even hardcore Franz Ferdinand fans which will be slightly disappointed and will expect more from a band like this who have so much talent and potential to fulfil, plus this album will surely not be nominated for 'Album of the Year' or anything but I guess it shall give fans of Franz Ferdinand something to listen to until they hopefully release a more ambitious and less predictable record on their fourth effort.

2½ / 5.


Linus Broadbent