Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. Tomorrow: Something better please

Beep Beep kids, it's all the way back to the 80's for Franz Ferdinand's latest. Alright, I'll give you that Ulysses is a good tune, even if ninety nine percent of all the pilled out indie kids who listen to it while swilling cheap cider and groping each others hair will never read it, just wikipedia it and pretend. Why not, it's how i got my damn degree.

 

There needs to be a little man in the studio, I’m going to call him a Frank just because I can, he doesn't have to wear a robe or have a funny hat or nothing, he just needs to live in a closet in the studio and occasionally pop his head out and go "Calm down lads, enough's enough." Seriously, this is when it becomes too much.

 

"Can we stick a synth in here?"

 

"Shit yeah we can!"

 

Damn near every track on the album is drowning in the kind of Eighties tomfoolery best forgotten. "Lucid Dreams" is a particular lowlight; Frank would have been out of his closet and all over it before anyone could even mention new wave. Sweet tap-dancing deities, it's 8 minutes long. 8 bloody minutes. I had a bloody lucid dream by the end of it. I dreamt i was stabbing the band up viciously with a pair of Agatha Christie brand murdering scissors, and a very pleasant dream it was too. Also, i had a rather nice pair of brown leather pointy half boots with a slight heel and a tight zip up the side. Shit i want some of those shoes.

 

Any who, this album is pretty crappy, for a band that's always style over substance, this lacks even a bit of that magic. Why do they have to try so bloody hard all the time? They can't even make a decent dance floor banger without sticking some shitty allusion to some high art piece of mumbo jumbo they're counting on most of their fan base having no knowledge of.

 

"Let's name ourselves after an assassinated archduke!"

"Let's drench everything in the motley dung heap of Russian Propaganda!"

 

"Let's name songs after experimental novels!"

 

Frank, come out the cupboard please, and beat them with a broom handle. Enough is enough

Rating: 3 Prince's out of 10