New (Leaked) Music: Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-photo-tonightff.jpgOne of the first maxims of good criticism is also one of the toughest to maintain: review the work based on what it is rather than what it isn’t. Sure, it sounds simple, but then you get an album like Scots Franz Ferdinand’s third full-length, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, and you can’t help but want to flog it for not being their wry, catchy, Mercury Prize-winning 2004 debut. Do more “Matinees,” dammit! Instead, the quartet have mostly abandoned the guitar-blasted riff-gasms of their past for spare, quirky disco and new wave, and if I focus really hard on ignoring their past, it’s actually not so bad, I guess.

Lead single “Ulysses” (watch the video below) has been hanging around the radio for a little while now, and that’s the song that has been the hardest to separate from the band’s past, since it basically sounds like “Take Me Out” beaten up with a Moog and forced to make out with Greg Kihn’s “Jeopardy.” The album gets it out of the way on Track 1, then switches to some more interesting sounds: the minimal post-punk of “Turn It On,” the deadpan disco of “No You Girls,” the silly swing of “Send Him Away.” They’re fine, especially “Turn It On,” but none of them have enough of a hook to make a lasting impression. “Live Alone” starts off promisingly, like a homemade, lo-fi version of the Bee Gees “You Should Be Dancing,” but never goes anywhere. It’s hard to shake the impression that this album is a pale imitation of another, better one.

Perhaps other reviewers are better at staying “in the moment” and letting go of the past. The Fly calls Tonight the band’s best album, “a dark, dancefloor art-pop neo-classic,” saying that its stripped-down production makes every element seem “vital.” But most reviews seem disappointed: somebody at Stereogum HQ said the album should have been named after Track 6, “Bite Hard” (ouch!) and Uncut calls it “emotionally plastic” and “contained,” although they do give it 3/5 stars. I know it’s unfair, but when you’ve got the unrestrained genius of “Take Me Out” hanging over your head, we critics can’t help but wonder where the good songs went.

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is out January 26 on Domino.

“Ulysses”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate