night of the atavistic junkies

The new Franz Ferdinand record basically confirms two things that many would have suspected about these Scottish pop stars: that they have already said all they needed to say in the 39 minutes of their incendiary self-titled debut in 2004, and that the prototype Franz Ferdinand sound isn't half as resilient when taken away from their familiar (i.e. dance-rock) settings. Actually I'm more or less hedging on the latter point, for Tonight: Franz Ferdinand clearly does not attempt to drift too far away from their clubland assets, and wisely so too, as this is a band blessed with almost mutant abilities to dish out hedonistic post-punk like it's a junk routine.

Where this third Franz Ferdinand album does different is in coming up with a neat little concept, Alex Kapranos having claimed that the songs revolve around a wild night out partying and the morning after. This being Franz Ferdinand, their splenetic energy is on display throughout ("Ulysses", "No You Girls", "What She Came For") and then there are also some newfound sound elements roped in: a dose of indie/LCD electronics (main offenders: "Live Alone" and "Lucid Dreams") or a few daps of tribe/dub beats here and there, nothing too distinctive to distract from the neo-discotheque riffs. Taking a cue from the album's concept, Tonight does get more interesting down the stretch when things turn way looser and everybody's done getting stoned - the woozy futuristic commercial jingle of "Dream Again" isn't too bad at all, a percursor of things to come perhaps.