Franz Ferdinand “Franz Ferdinand” (2004) – got it
I remember being into these guys from the off. I saw their video for “Take Me Out”
with its cool visuals. The song seemed to have an interesting melody,
then it suddenly started to decelerate (which I thought was awesome) and suddenly a danceable funky groove
kicked off and I was totally hooked.
A danceable groove is something that ranked high on FF’s to-do list as
they stated one of their goals was to “make music for girls to dance
to”. The music owes a heavy debt to Talking Heads’ mid-era material
with its nerdy white-boy funk groove (especially second track “Tell Her
Tonight”). That mix of disco beats, and funky guitar harks back to a
similar style popular in the 80s/late 70s and would soon become widely
popular with artists such as Bloc Party and Gossip.
The band recorded with producer Tore Johansson, who had helmed the
Cardigan’s brilliant “First Band on the Moon” (see day 832) which
featured a similar catchy mix of dance beats and funky guitar.
The album is nice and concise coming in under the 40-minute mark. There
are bursts of punky energy on songs like “Darts of Pleasure” and “This
Fire”. “The Dark of the Matinée” (a personal favourite of mine) has almost a theatricality to it that always brings to mind early Split Enz.
