Top 100 Albums - #48: You Could Have It So Much Better (2005)

Franz Ferdinand's second and final chart entry comes at number 48 with their second, and so far last, album.

The release of Franz Ferdinand (#84) in February 2004 made Franz Ferdinand global superstars. It was listed in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die; it won the 2004 Mercury Prize; and it spawned 5 hit singles, including 'Take Me Out' which hit #3 in the UK. Faced with such a monolithic success - something not usually accorded to debut albums - the band spent the remainder of 2004 consolidating their success on the live circuit, playing festivals and touring at a frenetic pace. In 2005, having stated in interviews their intention to follow up rapidly, the band retreated to the studio, demoing new material at the V Festival in August.

We open this much-anticipated follow-up with 'The Fallen'. At once, all the characteristics of Franz Ferdinand at their best are there: Paul Thompson's dynamic drumming, razor-sharp riffs, art school sensibility and a sense of humour. Here the lyrics are cleverer than before: Some say ya' troubled boy/ Just because you like to destroy/ All the things that bring the idiots joy/ Well, what's wrong with a little destruction? This is a brilliant, vibrant and lively start, which entertains you enough to make you dance, but treats you as an erudite human being instead of just some thug in tight jeans.

'Do You Want To' is another fine example of bombastic pop-rock, something which Franz Ferdinand do better than most in the 21st century. As on 'Take Me Out', there is a monumental tempo change part way through, but once again it's completely seamless. Alex Kapranos simplifies the lyrics but his delivery comes with a sense of purpose and sophistication, hidden behind a cheeky smile. Nick McCarthy's riffs are excellent and Bob Hardy's bass work on the verses is very effective. It's an intelligent pop song, one which flatters you as you bounce around the room.

Having made you dance incessantly until now, you are barely given time to breathe before it starts all over again. 'This Boy' begins with some lightning-quick snare work from Thompson over McCarthy's guitar, before cutting out as Kapranos strides up and drawls Yeah into the mike. It's effortlessly cool and yet relentless - while Franz Ferdinand carries you along at a steady pace, this feels like you're being kicked along like a football - and, unlike in real life, it feels good.

'Walk Away' is the second single culled from the album, and again it's a very fine effort. This has a 1960s feel to it; Kapranos is singing like his hero Ray Davies. McCarthy and Thompson are again on fine form, and leave sufficient space for both Kapranos and the acoustic part which creeps into the mix under all the electric paraphernalia. The final lines are quite strange, mind: The stab of a stiletto on a silent night/ Stalin smiles and Hitler laughs/ Churchill claps Mao Tse Tung on the back. I'm sorry?

'Evil And A Heathen' continues the promising trend set by its predecessors, as bombastics and heavy as the others. However, it's perhaps a good thing that this is only 2:05 long, as this is the first song in which we see the effect and the mood of the song overtaking the actual content. Because it's such a short and punchy song this doesn't really matter; had the band chosen to make this one of the longer track, it would have run out of steam pretty quickly.

'You're The Reason I'm Leaving' falls into a different kind of trap. This may have all the guitar- and drum-based ingredients of a Franz classic, but it has nowhere near enough substance. Many of the lyrics are padded out by repitition, and the riffs are a lot less eye- (or ear-)catching. McCarthy seems to have detuned his guitar because his solo from 1:27 onwards sounds terrible. This track is like a lot of modern indie music - all about looks and prancing around in an arty pair of skintight jeans, with no room for proper musicianship.

No matter, though, because it's soon over. Now we come to something completely different. 'Eleanor Put Your Boots On' sees the introduction of a piano alongside the acoustic. This creates a down-toned mood, which is brilliant for two reasons. One, it demonstrates the range of Franz Ferdinand as a band - it shows that they are not all about snazzy pop music. And two, this creates the perfect space for Kapranos' voice, with its Glaswegian tinge and inherent awkwardness. It becomes tender. This is like a better, more sophisticated version of 'Move On Now' by Hard-Fi, not just because Kapranos can sing better, but because it's completely unexpected. It's a marvellous track.

'Well That Was Easy' is yet another 3-minute indie pop song. They may well be trying harder here than on 'You're The Reason I'm Leaving', but throwing in a token change in time signature won't do it alone. As before, it feels way too casual - you can't dance to this one. But the worst bit about this track comes in the last minute - the repetition of that was easy, but I still miss you becomes so stependously garbled that you want to rip the CD in half as if it had been rinsed.

'What You Meant' is heaps better, returning us to the killer licks and lyrics of Franz at their best. Hardy is brutally strong on the bass, Thompson's drumming is energetic and the whole band is tight and flamboyant at the same time. The chorus may well be simple, but sometimes being overcomplicated spoils things. The third verse is a cracker: If we were feckless we'd be fine/ Sucking hard on our innocence/ But we've been bright enough to climb/ Been left as bleckened filament. Kapranos drawls these lines out with such grace and brio, it's a joy to listen to.

One of the more over-used tracks on here, 'I'm Your Villain' has a great, if now hackneyed intro. Again the bass is more prominent than before; again it's dragged along by McCarthy's razor-sharp strumming; and again it packs a few surprises along the way. No sooner have you gotten used to the snails'-pace verse than the 'chorus' comes at you at machine-gun speed, knocking you back about two feet. Drumming connoisseurs will notice that Thompson gets a lot more room to improvise his fills here, and while they don't always work, they do at least add variety.

The title track is yet another punchy, stricken number. The lyrics are like a drawn-out version of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' in the way that Kapranos decries the media and advertising: Because she wears this and/ He said that and/ If you get some of these/ It'll all be alright. But while that had an ostentatious air to it - it was the 1960s, remember - at the heart of this track is an arty sense of humour; the very way Kapranos says the word earpiece is bizarre.

'Fade Together' takes the successful musicality of 'Eleanor Put Your Boots On' (i.e. acoustic guitar and piano) and combines them again in a slightly different proportion. This creates another wonderful song, but not just because it's against type. Taken outside of the album, the song is an outstanding testament to British music. It has the eccentricity and tenderness of Nick Drake, with the melodic qualities of Paul McCartney at his peak. 'Outsiders', meanwhile, is overblown, over-complicated and over-long. The very production of this feels sprawling and drawn out, and the wierd, annoying electronica touches are just plain... stupid.

Although it received nowhere near as enough critical acclaim as its predecessor, You Could Have It So Much Better is an improvement from Franz Ferdinand. Partially, this is because the sound which made them a success in 2004 has been consolidated and nailed down, making the outfit as tight as possible. The big danger with bands at this stage is that their output tends to become formulaic, with albums becoming more about mood and style, and less about good songs. It happened to ELO, it's happening to Hard-Fi, but here it is avoided. Just. If this album did not have such brilliant tracks as 'Eleanor Put Your Boots On' and 'Fade Together', then listeners would feel cheated of Franz' real quality, and the album would live up to its name. In all, though, this is a bombastic, brilliant effort from Kapranos et al, which only goes to prove how much British music needs them to bring out a new album soon.

3.85 out of 5

Top 100 Albums - #84: Franz Ferdinand (2004)

The first indie rock record on our chart is the debut album from Scottish band Franz Ferdinand, who set the standard for 21st-century indie pop-rock which all subsequent indie bands have sought to emulate.

The four-piece comprised of Alex Kapranos, Nick McCarthy, Bob Hardy and Paul Thompson, formed in 2001, when Kapranos and Hardy began playing together in Glasgow. McCarthy joined after meeting the two at a party. A guitarist and classically trained pianist, McCarthy originally wanted to try out on the drums, helped on by the fact that Thompson, ex-drummer with 1990s indie band Yummy Fur, wanted to try out guitar. But their positions soon swapped and the band began gigging. In 2003 they were spotted by Domino Records, who signed them and released a debut EP, Darts Of Pleasure.

'Jacqueline' gives the first indication of what sets both the band and the album apart. Unlike other indie bands - from the pleasantly aggressive Hard-Fi to the disgracefully shouty Cribs - Franz Ferdinand has a witty and intellectual feel to its lyrics. This is obvious even with the opening lines:

Jacqueline was seventeen, working on a desk when I-
vor peered above his spectacle
Forgot that he had wrecked a girl

You would not expect such poetry from a band so commercial and easy on the ears - as Kapranos admitted in 2007, "It’s always pop. Franz Ferdinand has always been pop."¹ After a very gentle and melodic opening, the bass guitar and drums kicks in and then McCarthy and Kapranos let rip with a series of razor sharp chords. What had been a mild-mannered folkish number with ulterior motives becomes a 21st-century stadium rocker. Lines like It's always better on holiday/ So much better on holiday/ That's why we only work when/ We need the money are both a direct appeal to their teenage audience and a summary of this generation's attitude.

'Tell Her Tonight' is more awkward and standard fare. With its repetitive verse structure and humdrum 60s chorus, it doesn't invoke the same emotional response. In what could be loosely called the middle-eight, Kapranos sounds so Teutonic and nasal that it becomes off-putting. McCarthy's chords are short, sharp and sub-standard when we consider the skill demonstrated on 'Jacqueline'.

We now come to 'Take Me Out'. This is not only the best track, it is an anthem for the 21st century. The chord progressions are sharper, the lyrics more memorable and the change in tempo and time signature at about 0:53 is on a sublime level only touched by the likes of 'Money'. The remainder of the song is breathtaking, toe-tapping and infectiously catchy. You will find it very hard not to stomp your feet, bang your head or air guitar to this superbly constructed song. While McCarthy works wonders with his strumming, Thompson's off-beat strokes add a wonderfully avant-garde touch. He is a very underrated drummer; though his skills are better showcased on You Can Have It So Much Better (2005), the signs are already there.

'The Dark Of The Matinée' manages to pretty much sustain this quality, again incorporating a well-executed tempo change. This is a love song which takes a welcome snipe at the vacuous pop and even more vacuous 'celebrities' emerging from the reality TV machine. The middle section is especially caustic:

So I'm on BBC2 now
Telling Terry Wogan how I made it and
What I made is unclear now
But his deference is, and his laugter is

With another infection chorus and good bass work - which is so often overlooked on indie records - this was another Top 10 hit simply because it is so well put together and sustains both musical prowess and contemporary relevance.

'Auf Asche' is the first truly strange track on the record. As shown by their videos, Franz Ferdinand are fascinated by 1920s avant-garde, and this is the first time this takes centre stage. There are hints in the spacious piano of an Eno soundscape - indeed, if Kapranos were any less distinctive, this may have been confused for a Bowie outtake from the Berlin era. There are no pop hooks either, but this is a cleverer and more complex song, so this doesn't really apply. With themes of broken love and isolation, and Christian references towards the end, this is a very interesting piece which would be an interesting thread to develop on later albums.

Having set an ever more ambitious and progressive tone, the band lose focus on both 'Cheating On You' and 'This Fire'. Both could be unfairly described as sell-outs - they are entirely built around catchy and repeating riffs - i.e. hooks - and the lyrics are relatively trite. 'Cheating On You' goes nowhere; you get the point of the song by the end of the first verse, or the first chorus if you're slower or more tolerant. 'This Fire' tries harder, with a good combination of Thompson's cymbals and McCarthy's squeaky riffs, but soon this collapses into their attempts at being lite-Muse. This doesn't get off the ground and they spend the remaining minutes wasting our time going around in circles, unsure of when is the time to stop.

'Darts Of Pleasure' manages to synthesise, at least partially, the conflicting media of aggressive, outspoken indie rock and quieter, avant-garde ostention. How? Largely through Kapranos' delivery and Thompson's drumming, both of which are highly intelligent. The song sounds like someone has taken 'Auf Asche' and 'Take Me Out', copied the best parts and blended them perfectly together. And, incidentally, the German at the end is one of the first incidencies in British music where using a foreign language for part of a song actually works.

'Michael' is pure guitar pop, coming from a band who could be loosely described as 'Blur with enthusiasm', or more accurately, 'Better than Blur'. The song is about a friend of the band who got drunk and started dancing effeminately at a party. Kapranos may not be Morrissey, but he succeed admirably in conveying the homoerotic impulse of the song in his lyrics and his delivery. The band sound confident, rocky and full of energy. There are some lovely harmonies reminiscent of The Beatles from McCarthy, who does himself resemble a young Sir Paul.

'Come On Home' is another well-crafted song with an American feel to it. Indeed you could be forgiven for turning down the volume prematurely for assuming that this was a country ballad purely by the sound of Kapranos' guitar. Hardy underscores him very well in the verses, while Thompson keeps things going well and McCarthy staves off country comparisons by some simple yet splendid synthesiser work - another avenue to pursue on future albums, should they so choose.

The album would be very good if 'Come On Home' had been the closer. But, unfortunately as it turns out, the band have one more offering. '40'' is too loose to pass off properly. Kapranos is trying to be clever with his lyrics - perhaps too clever, as after the initial few impressive lines it degenerates first into a 60s 'la la la' filler, then an organised studio jam with little sense of direction. What a shame.

Universally praised when it came out, Franz Ferdinand clearly deserves a lot of the praise it was given. The production is excellent, bringing out the four instruments as a collective unit, instead of four opposing war machines. The songs, with a few exceptions, are good not just because they are catchy, but because they are intelligent, arty and have a subtle wittiness that you don't see in many 21st century bands. It is also very bold for introducing part-way through into the mix a series of instruments and influences which could prove successful on later efforts. Above all, the real significance of Franz Ferdinand is an historical one; in years to come it will be the record which relaunced the indie quest for the charts long after Oasis had passed their self-by date. Though a little rough around the edges, it is a worthy addition to any record collection.

3.73 out of 5

References
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Ferdinand_(band). Accessed on July 26 2007.