Rock
Franz Ferdinand Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
Domino
ESSENTIAL "Send Him Away"
Part of the fun of Franz Ferdinand's music is vocalist Alex Kapranos's wildly divergent moods. One minute he's on a giddy high, feet barely touching the ground as he expounds on the glories of love with a combination of nonsensical babbling and straightforward declarations. The next he's sobbing morosely as he examines the aftermath of romantic devastation. Who hasn't been in both those places?
But no matter whether the frontman's heart is swelling or cracking, the Scottish quartet reliably churns out spiky riffs, pumping beats, and bubbling disco bass lines that keep the hips moving. The band's third album, "Tonight: Franz Ferdinand," continues the tradition - with a few small twists. Some tunes brim with Kapranos's still-charming sense of awe in the face of the opposite sex. The twitchy, fuzz-guitar ode to going weak at the knees, "No You Girls," laments the universal consternation over feminine wiles. "You could turn my dirty world the bright way round," Kapranos croons to a potential match with a yearning whine that evokes Andy Partridge of XTC in "Twilight Anthems."
