(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Albums: #18: Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand (2004)

It’s easy to get caught up with all the reviews in the Internet and all the buzz in the blogosphere. You see pixels form the words “dance rock” or “disco punk” or “post-punk” and you scoff. It’s pretty much automatic. Especially in 2004; we can all agree that this whole dancey-rock movement reached its height in 2003. By the time Franz Ferdinand came into the scene, everyone who are in “the scene” was already sick of them before they even got started. Sure the people who still listen to rock radio were flabbergasted when “Take Me Out” hit the airwaves, but to those who have have Pitchfork as their home pages and have thirty music blogs in their Google Reader, why would they want to hear from another one of these disco punks, especially from a bunch of Scottish art students with angular haircuts and tight black blazers over striped shirts and polished pointed-tip boots.

I wish they put a little disclaimer on their website or on the CD sleeve of their self-titled debut when it came out. “Don’t worry, guys. We’re from Scotland; the home of kilts and bagpipes, Braveheart and the Loch Ness Monster, haggis and Scotch whisky. We’re different from these New York hype magnets that you’re probably sick of since last year. We’re not updated by DFA production tricks and remixes like The Rapture. We don’t try to copy Joy Division gloom-and-doom like Interpol. We’re not too cool that we’ve forgotten how to make a record with an updated sound like The Strokes. Nah, we’re none of these things. We were sitting around in an art gallery in Glasgow one day and we decided to make a fun record to dance to because, y’know, it’s fucking fun to dance to records. Calls us whatever you want but make sure to enjoy yourself when you listen to Franz Ferdinand!” It’s a little confrontational, but I’m pretty sure it’d be a good plan to appease the naysayers.

The album opens with “Jacqueline”, a spoken word confessional that reminds you of Pulp for 40 seconds and a surfer-rock anthem for slackers the rest. “It’s so much better on holidays” is a script that is fun to sing along. The lyrics never deviates far from elementary topics like the wordless flirting in “Tell Her Tonight” or the infatuation in “Auf Asche”. The music, however, more than makes up for the lack of complexity in the lyrics since Franz Ferdinand charged these eleven tracks with vigorous, ready to explode riffs and arrangements.
It’s proof that it’s not critical for a rock band to have insightful words to succeed. The best flattering remark that I can say about this album is that all their songs would be terrific choices for when you’re in a karaoke bar.

And they dish out one sonic tasty dish after another: “Matinee”’s semi-automatic snares mingle well with the head banging guitar might; “Michael” is a force of nature when the propulsiveness of the rhythm section is synched with the jackhammer guitar riff. The alarming cymbal ring in the intro of “This Fire” is a nice touch, and I bet it’s no accident. Of course, there’s the famous “psych” in “Take Me Out” where they went from sounding like The Strokes to a band that takes their disco stomping seriously.

Franz Ferdinand followed up their self-titled debut with a respectable sophomore album, You Can Have It So Much Better, and a somewhat-respectable-but-nothing-to-get-excited-about third album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. It’s sad to say, however, that twenty to thirty years from now, the public probably won’t remember Franz Ferdinand as a Hall of Fame band. With that said, their importance in the zeroes can’t be ignored though. They’re one of the main vehicles to transport the dance-rock genre from the underground to the mainstream. They were so effectual that we even got a juvenile band like The Ting Tings rocking it out while getting it down. We should all be thankful that they’re one of the reasons that made radio rock, which was starting to be such a bore in the zeroes, fun again.