Confession time. Your reviewer’s previously been rather suspicious of FRANZ FERDINAND’S motives. Yes, on the face of it, they are a band he should have embraced from the off as they are intelligent and stylish and history will probably read that their adventures in snappy pop angularity will end up selling more and outdistancing them from the likes of Maximo Park and The Rakes now that the craze for all things post-punk has finally begun to abate. Again.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that – against the grain of your reviewer’s thinking – FF are proving they have the mettle and suss to be in this game for the long haul, and ultimately that spate of NME front covers might not scupper them after all. Because, in “You Could Have It So Much Better” they made an album worthy of consideration in its’ own right and with “The Fallen” they are releasing surely their finest single to date.
So let’s get to it, for “The Fallen” is the one where I finally capitulate. It’s an absolute corker: ballsy and immediate, bright and powerful and produced with some clarity by Rich Costey. It’s got some of Alex Kapranos’s best lyrics to date (“Just because you like to destroy all the things that bring the idiots joy/ well, what’s wrong with a little destruction?”), a rhythm that swings and bucks like a rollercoaster and more swagger in the band’s collective loins than this writer had previously thought scientifically possible.
|
Just for good measure, we also get one of the better Club remoulds courtesy of the JUSTICE remix. Although it’s still pushing it a bit to deem it ‘essential’, this itchy’n’glitchy Skint/ Sugarhill Gang hybrid is nonetheless top-hole dance floor action and suggests FF are (ahem) ‘down’ with all matters club-friendly and – given the right outlet – proves their superior rhythmic wares translate rather well in such foreign climes too.
Result on all fronts, then.
|
