Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
Franz Ferdinand
Domino Records
Franz Ferdinand is back with all guns blazing.
The Irish dance-rock band faded out of the spotlight in the years following 2009’s Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. After an explosive debut album and impressive sophomore, their third effort got too ambitious and the band seemed to drop the ball.
Four years later, the band has released its fourth album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, and they seem to have found their heads once more.
The minute the new album starts, the band already has you wanting to dance. The crunchy funk guitars mesh with tight drumming, creating a call-back to the sound that first exploded the band onto the scene. But now there’s more to this band than what was there when their first album came out.
The new album shows growth with excellent use of keyboards and organs, which are noticeable from the get-go, with “Right Action” featuring synths and keyboards prevalently.
The band also gets more contemplative on some songs, like “Fresh Strawberries,” where they contemplate spirituality, asking “wouldn’t it be easy to believe?”
“Goodbye Lovers and Friends” has a dark maturity to it, as they sing “Don’t play pop music/You know I hate pop music.”
“The Universe Expanded” is another progression to add to the band’s repertoire. It has a slow build-up, with metaphysical lyrics juxtaposing love and the universe.
The science fiction feel pushes on through “Brief Encounters,” where spacey keyboards hover around the song. The song itself compares life to a swinger’s party, and it somehow works when they sing “We are brief encounters/We all lose our keys/We all choose our partners/We all choose our keys.”
The album’s strongest song is “Evil Eye,” which begins with a primal scream and proceeds to break into what sounds like a possessed fun-house. The song has a wonderfully funky bassline, and sounds like what might happen if you smashed together The Talking Heads and The Clash.
Everywhere you turn on this album, catchy hooks are to be found. Between its “do do do” bridge and the chorus of the song, “Right Thoughts” is a recipe for earworms. “Evil Eye” has just as many catchy lines.
All of the instrumentation gives this album a much thicker sound than their earlier efforts. It works in some parts, but it also means some of the funkier, fun guitar lines get lost in the fray. This album doesn’t have the memorable riffs that you’ll find on “Take Me Out” or “40’,” but it has more experience and depth to it.
It seems as though Franz Ferdinand have gotten back onto the rails after a minor detour over the past couple years. Now that the band has found their footing once more, they definitely have the potential to launch back into a memorable career.
