Heather Phares, All Music Guide

While the Darts of Pleasure EP proved that Franz Ferdinand had a way with equally sharp lyrics and hooks, and the "Take Me Out" single took their sound to dramatic new heights, their self-titled debut album offers the most expansive version of their music yet. From the first track, "Jacqueline," which begins with a brooding acoustic prelude before jumping into a violently vibrant celebration of hedonism, Franz Ferdinand is darker and more diverse than the band's previous work suggested. "Auf Ausche" has an unsettling aggression underneath its romantic yearning, its cheap synth strings and pianos underscoring its low-rent moodiness and ruined glamour. And even in the album's context, "Take Me Out" remains unmatched for sheer drama; with its relentless stomp and lyrics like "I'm just a cross hair/I'm just a shot away from you," it's deliciously unclear whether it's about meeting a date or a firing squad. The wonderfully dry wit the band employed on Darts of Pleasure's "Shopping for Blood" and "Van Tango" is used more subtly: the oddly radiant "Matinee" captures romantic escapism via dizzying wordplay. "Michael," meanwhile, is a post-post-punk "John, I'm Only Dancing," by equal turns macho and fey; when Alex Kapranos proclaims "This is what I am/I am a man/So come and dance with me, Michael," it's erotic as well as homoerotic. Love and lust make up a far greater portion of Franz Ferdinand than any of the band's other work; previously, Franz Ferdinand's strong suit was witty aggressiveness, and the shift in focus has mixed results. There's something a little too manic and unsettled about Franz Ferdinand to make them completely convincing romantics, but "Come On Home" has swooning, anthemic choruses guaranteed to melt even those who hate swooning, anthemic choruses. Fortunately, the album includes enough of their louder, crazier songs to please fans of their EPs. "Darts of Pleasure" remains one of the best expressions of Franz Ferdinand's shabby glamour, campy humor, and sugar-buzz energy, and "Tell Her Tonight," which debuted on the Darts of Pleasure EP, returns in a full-fledged version that's even more slinky, menacing, and danceable than the demo hinted it might be. And if Franz Ferdinand's aim has always been to get people dancing, then "Cheating on You"'s churned-up art punk and close, Merseybeat-like harmonies suggest some combination of slam dancing and the twist that could sweep dancefloors. Despite its slight unevenness, Franz Ferdinand ends up being rewarding in different ways than the band's previous work was, and it's apparent that they're one of the more exciting groups to come out of the garage rock/post-punk revival.

Mike McGonigal, Amazon.com

Franz Ferdinand is an unrelentingly smart, fluffy, and fun debut. This Scottish four-piece plays vaguely angular, guitar-heavy post-pop that makes you want to dance around the room while playing air guitar. It's the ideal hipster guilty-pleasure music. This is what the Rapture and Interpol would sound like if they wrote songs half as good as those they rip off, or the Strokes if their parents had sent them to art school instead of the fashion academy. Every song on here is so blatantly derivative it sounds almost original, like a Blur without the gloomy hangover. It's too early yet to tell if this is just a band for the moment or one for the ages--but who really cares with pop music, anyway? Songs like "Darts of Pleasure," "Come on Home," "Take Me Out," and "Cheating on You" are so good they will surely appeal even to those without slanty, messy haircuts.

Paul Eisinger, Amazon.co.uk

Touted as being the first great album of 2004, Franz Ferdinand's eponymous debut may be the secret weapon that'll kick-start the British fight against the White Strokes. Though they have a reputation as being bohemian art-obsessed dilettantes, they're at the vanguard of the Art Wave scene, and possess a fierce determination to change the face of modern music--their twin aims: to bring back cerebral rock that makes you want to dance, and to bring frontline music back home (witness exclusively British lyrics such as "I'm on BBC 2 now; telling Terry Wogan how I made it"). So what weapons do these four skinny lads engage to galvanise the UK music scene? Unsurprisingly, they roll out the big guns of Britpop past. "Cheating on You" bounces like early Blur; "Come on Home" soars like pre-OK Computer Radiohead; "Michael" flirts with Suede-esque sexual androgyny; and "Matinee" sleazes onto you like Pulp at their most lascivious.
Though they draw on the past, they do so wisely, injecting voguish angular 80s synth-pop with old-fashioned heart and soul. Their debut embraces the experimental, featuring time-signature changes and mid-song tempo drops, yet its solidity prevents it from consignment to the gratuitously quirky bin. If you feel that the Rapture lack a sense of drama and Interpol lack joy and energy, then Franz Ferdinand are the boys for you. Their stated ambition is to erase the Archduke Franz Ferdinand from the annals of history and replace him in the collective consciousness with themselves. Archduke who?

Lydia Vanderloo, Barnes & Noble

Scotland's fertile indie scene -- which has turned out everything from the baroque pop of Belle & Sebastian to the throbbing prog-rock of Mogwai -- produces yet another winner with art-punk quartet Franz Ferdinand. A top-selling act in the U.K., FF answer the post-punk call of New York City throwbacks such as the Strokes, the Rapture, and Interpol. That said, the band cover the waterfront on their debut, suggesting the Stranglers with the sweaty sexual innuendo of "Darts of Pleasure," Pulp on the keyboard-doused "Come on Home," and Gang of Four's angular guitar work on the dramatic, funk-rock single "Take Me Out." The twin axe attack, in particular, gives Franz Ferdinand a pep to its step, as Nick McCarthy and singer Alex Kapranos, both on guitar, spar with bassist Bob Hardy, and with one another, on scrabbling, angst-riddled songs like "Jaqueline," on which Kapranos spits out lyrics such as "It's always better on holiday / That's why we only work when we need the money." When he isn't churning out working-class screeds, Kapranos focuses on more corporeal issues, as on the lusty "Michael," which takes cues from a long line of glammy singers who've flirted with ambisexuality -- from Bowie to Morrissey to Suede's Brett Anderson. It may sound chaotic, but Kapranos and his gang wear their influences well, and retro as it may be, Franz Ferdinand's style is fun, energetic, and utterly of the moment.

Simon Fernand, BBC

If you believe what you read, Franz Ferdinand are Glasgow's answer to The Strokes. Only they don't really sound like The Strokes. Or look like them. Or have much in common with them at all. It's all a bit confusing, really. Surely this, their eponymous debut album, can't live up to comparisons with Is This It? Or can it?

Well...yes, frankly. Glasgow's next big things have come up with a cracking debut, taking elements from all over the place. Funky guitar playing that would make Nile Rodgers proud; wonderful harmonised vocals; a simple-but-effective drum sound; sexy, throbbing basslines; and a keyboard sound so cheesy that you could bait a mousetrap with it. And it works. I'm not much of a dancer, but this album makes me want to get up and do a little jig - all hips, elbows and twitchy head movements. A Jarvis Cocker impersonation, if you like...

There's not a bad track on the album, so trying to pick standout tracks is more or less arbitrary. My current favourites are "The Dark Of The Matinee" for its strange tale of art-school passion, and the fact that it name-checks Terry Wogan (!). And "Come on Home" because it's got great lyrics and a wonderfully lame keyboard sound. (An hour ago my favourites were "Michael" and "Tell Her Tonight" - give me another hour and I'll have changed my mind again, I'm sure...)

At only 38 minutes long Franz Ferdinand may not be a particularly long album, but it is a masterpiece of funky, punky, suave cool from the first track to the last. Alex Kapranos and co. have got the formula just right. A pinch of this and a smattering of that from here, there and everywhere. "Come on Home" and "Auf Acshe" could be distantly related to Blondie's "Atomic" while "Tell Her Tonight" sounds a bit like "Boogie Nights" (in a good way). The whole album sounds sort of familiar. Despite this, it's always unmistakably Franz Ferdinand. But that's usually the way with great albums isn't it?

Franz Ferdinand: Alexander Kapranos (vocals, guitar); Nicholas McCarthy (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Robert Hardy (bass); Paul Thomson (drums, background vocals).

On their self-titled debut, Glasgow foursome Franz Ferdinand lift the jagged, danceable sounds of British post-punk to elegant and dizzying new heights. While they may seem to have much in common with the wave of American bands emerging in the early 2000s, Franz Ferdinand demonstrates a close study of the genre and proves its prowess. If the Rapture is a rowdy kegger in a Brooklyn loft, then Franz Ferdinand is a gin-soaked dance-off at an outdoor European cafe where no table remains untipped. As disciples of the Fire Engines, Josef K, and Orange Juice, chief songwriters Alex Kapranos and Nicholas McCarthy temper the edges with a sense of melody that wisely falls just shy of Blondie-style bubble gum. The centerpiece is "Take Me Out" (a U.K. top ten hit), which plays out a series of come-ons between rival assassins, over what begins as a sneering slice of mid-1990s Britpop, only to morph into a funky dance-floor tune. Kapranos is often quoted as saying that the band was started in order to "make music that girls can dance to," but this unusually assured debut is quite likely to affect discriminating boys in exactly the same way.

Jesse Fahnestock, Ink Blot Magazine

Every once in a great while, a group comes a long and makes the standard rock format of guitars, bass, drums and voice sound completely new. Franz Ferdinand are not that band.

No, this is a far more familiar proposition. You may have heard phrases like "new-wave" and "punk-funk" and "1979" cropping up in discussion of the band, and fair play: their raw, rattling sound is not unfriendly to the current iteration of revivalist zeitgeist. But it's perhaps an indication of how unfunky rock music has become that Franz Ferdinand have been talked about as dance-rock fusionists. They do have an excellent drummer in their midst, and he does enjoy opening his hi-hat on the downbeat in the way that disco drummers used to … but, ya know, that's about the extent of it. To their credit, Franz Ferdinand seem to recognize that rock'n'roll is already quite danceable when it's played well. The Rapture they are not.

Their lineage really extends well beyond post-punk, and as early as last year's Darts of Pleasure EP they were showcasing the kind of stomping rhythms, sticky choruses and predilection for looking daft and talking bollocks that have been the hallmark of great British artrockers from The Kinks to Blur via The Smiths. (Indeed, the post-punkers they recall most may be quintissential artschoolers XTC). With album-teaser "Take Me Out" finding a deserved place in the upper regions of the pop charts in Britain, their (inevitably) self-titled debut now has a question answer: do they have the songs to match their obvious ambition?

Looking good, lads. Franz Ferdinand is a very confident debut, not least because it shuns two of the stellar b-sides from Darts of Pleasure. They've added subtlety without sacrificing their boundless energy or taste for the absurd: Indeed on the gay dancefloor-cruising "Michael" they prove they're still willing to take an hilarious step too far. The arrangements are splendid, wearing British Invasion pop, disco, punk and indie like so many lived-in jumpers, and absolutely everything packs a tune. Most songs have two or three.

Franz Ferdinand's weakness, if they have one, may be their archness, and the fine line they walk between enjoyably daft artrock and ironically-mustachioed ridiculousness. "Cheating On You" is a great tune undermined slightly by its nasty smirk, "Darts of Pleasure" is -- well, it's called "Darts of Pleasure," ferchrissakes -- and "Michael's" lisping German homoeroticism is just silly. But all three feel at home here, and it would be a mistake to sacrifice their spirit of adventure for a further taste of the chart action afforded by the comparatively straight (if absolutely ferocious) "Take Me Out." If they're going to take their place next to their forebears, they'll have to do it on their own terms. Franz Ferdinand is a good start.

Jaime Gill, Yahoo! Music

What is it about the lowly guitar that inspires such stubborn, partisan passion in so many music fans? A hundred brilliant pop records can be released but if they haven't been rubbed vigorously against a Stratocaster the purists are stricken by a temporary but total deafness. Conversely, if a guitar band comes along with even the scantest songwriting ability and a mere sprinkling of style, they are lauded as the band who will save music from itself.

Fortunately, unlike the remarkably over-rated Strokes, Franz Ferdinand have more than just a little bit of style and songwriting suss about them. So if this record isn't the heart-stopping, epoch defining masterpiece that some are claiming, it's still one of the more confident and intriguing guitar debuts to have emerged since the collapse of Britpop.

Opener 'Jacqueline' sums up everything good about Franz Ferdinand, beginning with a tender sketch of passionate glances across a sterile office, before its mutation into a joyous, snappy celebration of working class culture over which Alex Kapranos yelps about it being 'better on holiday'. Sadly, the energy it generates is quickly dissipated by 'Tell Her Tonight', which is slender and inconsequential.

The same can't be said of the extraordinary 'Take Me Out', not only the album's masterpiece but the most arresting guitar based single to trouble the charts in recent history. Its Strokes-like intro proves just how easy it is to (under)achieve that subdued, mumbling sound, while its sudden lurch into an angular, irresistible stomp - all snare and staccato rhythms - proves their ambitions are not only loftier but a lot more fun.

From this point 'Franz Ferdinand' flits between moments of extravagant brilliance and more humdrum, unambitious indie fare. 'Matinee' is another near classic with a sizzling guitar riff and an undertow of sexual longing and nostalgia, while 'Auf Achse' is tautly dramatic and haunting. 'This Fire', on the other hand, is a new wave screechalong of the kind that so heavily overpopulated the Hot Hot Heat album.

The two oddest things here are 'Come On Home' and 'Michael'. The former is a precise slow-burner dedicated to the perverse joys of sulking, while the latter is whippet thin and wiry, a bruising ode to gay lust that manages to avoid sounding voyeuristic thanks to the joyous line 'beautiful boys on a beautiful dancefloor'. On these songs, Franz sound something like the band their admirers would like them to be.

In the end, 'Franz Ferdinand' isn't quite the revenge of the white indie boy that so many critics would wish it to be. It won't usher in a bold new era where boys are boys and bands play guitars, but there is more than enough here to chew over and enjoy. Blur and The Smiths started their careers with disappointing debuts, but went on to live up to the hype invested in them. Franz Ferdinand might just do the same.

Anthony Thornton, New Musical Express

It’s the modest ones you’ve got to look out for. Franz Ferdinand’s aim is to "make records that girls can dance to and to cut through postured crap". Oh really? After all they sport art-school crops, stripey shirts and the moniker of the archduke whose assassination kick-started the First World War. In short, last time we checked they weren’t quite Jet. So Franz Ferdinand, then: Posturing? Yes. Crap? Well, we’ll get to that.

So they’re smart enough to play a little dumb. And certainly this debut fulfils their modest - but laudable - aim of making girls gyrate. Because, without doubt, this debut is an album packed with tunes that will make anyone with legs dance. At indie discos across the land their first two singles have been packing dancefloors. So, in essence, we have the band equivalent of the smart kid who shoplifts to get popular, who plays down their IQ to fit in.

And why not? There’s a great tradition of smart people at first confusing the world with the apparent simplicity of what they do: Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, even The Rolling Stones. Because, the single theme of British music of the last decade has remained constant: no one likes a smart-arse. We all have a giggle at the silly musicians pompously proclaiming their genius. Nothing makes us laugh as much as authors of rock operas, or Metallica’s dabblings in classical music and, of course, everything that comes out of Brian Molko’s mouth. Who wouldn’t want to avoid the trap of being seen to be clever-clever? After all, just look what happened to Blur.

But then, of course, it’s Oasis’s fault that we find ourselves at this juncture. They beat Blur so comprehensively - so completely - that, to be in a band and be smart, to challenge assumptions, or go out on a limb became unthinkable. The amazing lineage of British art-school bands simply fizzled out: The Beatles, The Who, the Stones, Roxy Music, Sex Pistols, Wire, Blur and nothing. Since then, all the new big and important bands have been salt-of-the earth types (Stereophonics) or sweeping romantics (Coldplay) and they dressed like neglected shelf-fillers.

Franz Ferdinand formed after meeting at Glasgow College of Art, signing in summer 2003 - so they’re settled into a noble and inescapable tradition. The problem is that, despite their self-effacing aims, their records are informed and driven by this tradition. This may be sad for them, but it’s great news for us. Because, however fantastically dancey or lose-yourself a track is, there remains at its core an intelligence that makes it as engaging for the brain as it is for the feet. From the guitar-dicing song arrangements to the cod-German anthemic end to ‘Darts Of Pleasure’, at the heart of Franz there’s an innate need to subvert those tunes and reject cliché.

As critics have noted even the crowd-pleasing top-three sounds they use owe themselves to the informed art-school political disco-assault of early ‘80s post-punkers Gang Of Four and Josef K. But where the post-punkers’ caustic tunes were hemmed in by politics, ideology and sloganeering, Franz Ferdinand cloak themselves in love and ambiguity.

Ideas slide in and out of view as they refuse to get tied to anything. If there is one overriding theme it’s that of structure. They appear to have taken the tired grunge blueprint of quiet/loud/quiet/loud and breathed new life into it so that it becomes laconic/dance/laconic/dance.

For when they’re not dancing, they’re revelling in the detached passion of a voyeur. Alex Kapranos’s attitudes are wrapped up in smudged passion. It’s arch, but revealing. ("I want this fantastic passion/We’ll have fantastic passion" he chimes charmingly in ‘Darts Of Pleasure’) - he’s a lothario with mean intent and knows exactly which buttons to press. But you half suspect that it’s another pose: if actually confronted with heaving passion he’d run a mile. How very British.

This teasing uncertainty lies at the heart of the album. ‘Michael’ may at first appear to be a frank exploration of homoeroticism ("Michael you’re dancing like a beautiful dance whore") but really Alex is just playing at sexual roles in the same way Morrissey enjoyed 20 years ago.

Alex has two clear voices: a rich, warm, honeyed croon that he employs to devastating effect throughout the laconic sections and a more straight-ahead rock voice. It’s an unsettling effect - not quite Scott Walker playing vocal tag with a rock Bowie but not far off. It’s another example of the bountiful contradictions at the heart of Franz Ferdinand. Of course, on ‘Darts Of Pleasure’ the two voices almost meld as they battle for supremacy - it’s this struggle that makes the song so potent.

But Franz Ferdinand aren’t satisfied with just two voices though, indulging in the twisted absurdist yelp of ‘Tell Her Tonight’’s verse, coupled with its mannered mid-section, and ‘Darts Of Pleasure’s cod-German energetic outro that’s designed to replicate the moment of orgasm. It’s preferable to screeching "Goal!", but should your lover ever make the vinegar face and cry out "I’m super fantastic, I drink champagne and salmon" in any language it’s probably advisable to ditch them. Immediately.

What makes this all the more extraordinary is that ‘Take Me Out’ is a typical record executive’s idea of exactly what not to release as a single. It’s essentially two songs spot-welded together like one of those Robin Reliant/BMW conjunctions that Watchdog always gets so annoyed about. Sadly, the more cautious radio presenters have elected to play just the second half, missing that this is an inspired coupling that showcases all Franz Ferdinand’s strengths: staccato guitars, disco rhythms and arch lyrics.

A more pretentious writer would state that the moment the stuttering Strokesy guitars are replaced by the booty-shaking rhythm and disco guitar is the moment that the sun goes down on Julian Casablancas mob. Not me, though. But it’s an intriguing idea.

The two deviations from the messy subject of sex bookend the album. The opener, ‘Jacqueline’ is dazzling. Alex murmurs a tale of 17-year-old office girl exchanging glances, as a guitar hesitantly strums. It’s the most low-key opening of an album in recent memory, but suddenly the insistent bass intrudes, absurdly spiky guitars burst in, the focus pulls back and the remainder of the song is an advert for being on the dole. Alex sneers as though he hates work, but it’s an OK compromise. More importantly, it’s a compromise he’s chosen: "It’s always better on holiday/So much better on holiday/That’s why we only work when/We need the money". Not quite a philosophy, but a pretty decent way of life. Ironically the closer ’40 Ft’ with its veiled allusions to death is the song that look to the future. Its ominous references to blood congealing and 40 feet remaining seem transparent references to suicide. The band claim it’s more to do with flinging yourself into a difficult situation than off a railway bridge but its detached delivery and fractured elegance is creepy and mesmerising. Rarely for a debut, there’s no crap - ‘Cheating On You’ is the closest to giving off the scent of ‘will-this-do?’ but only because its thrills are uncharacteristically one-dimensional. But there is still pleasure aplenty in the way they race through the pointed chorus ("Goodbye girl because it’s only love") - as if the band member that finishes last is going to have to pick up the bar tab.

This album is the latest and most intoxicating example of the wonderful pushing its way up between the ugly slabs of Pop Idol, nu metal and Britons aping American bands. What these blossoming bands have in common is the absolute conviction that rock ‘n’ roll is more than a career option. They’re bringing an energy and inventiveness and a need to break the rules. From the Franz Ferdinand gigs at the warehouse The Chateau and their bootleg album (see box) through to The Libertines' constant guerrilla gigging and British Sea Power’s onstage bear'n'branches antics new British music is exciting again. And although it’s early days there’s a huge bunch of new bands coming up giving two fingers to the man and making extraordinary music.

Emerging now are The '80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster finally fulfilling their promise, The Duke Spirit whipping up dark pleasures, The Futureheads genetically-mutating rock and there’s a whole art rock scene based around the Angular Records compilation with Bloc Party and Art Brut leading the pack. Now is the greatest time for 25 years to form a band.

With Travis scraping into the charts at 48 while Franz Ferdinand breeze in nonchalantly at three it with ‘Take Me Out’, it’s the biggest upheaval since Pulp turned heads when ‘Common People’ went to number two in 1995. It marks the dawning of an era of British music that isn’t just for the casual petrol shop consumer, but stuff so important that you can give yourself to it completely. This is the album that’s going kick open the door for all the great British bands that’ll sweep through in their wake.

And this is a great place to start. Despite what Franz Ferdinand say, this is an album as much about preening and posing as passion, that’ll have you poring over the lyrics for an age. The fear that they couldn’t match their first two singles has proved unfounded. They’ve done it. With style, wit and, well, great posture.

Brent DiCrescenzo, Pitchfork Media, March 9, 2004

With the cash from the Thesaurus Musicarum sales snowing in, Editor-in-Chief Ryan Schreiber decided to treat the entire staff of Pitchfork to a weekend retreat at Steamers, a Finnish bath/scat fetish "bunny ranch" in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Having just completed principle photography on a documentary biopic detailing my creative life, I decided to tag along despite no longer feeling part of the team. Due to seniority, Ryan gave me the back bench on the bus. As the fresh writers swapped customized iPod skins and debated the cultural impact of Xiu Moo, I counted passing silos while listening to worn Britpop mix cassettes and neurotically rubbing the growing bald spot on my scalp. Ryan slipped in next to me. He pulled a maroon jewelry box from his Member's Only.

"I was going to wait to give this to you," he said.

"Oh, I, thanks," I said.

Inside the box sat a green lapel pin shaped like the number six laid over Poseidon's trident.

"It's a service pin. It's jade," Ryan said.

"Yeah, I get the joke. I just don't see why six years is an anniversary to celebrate," I said.

"That's how long the Pixies were around. Besides, I wanted to ask you to write a new review," he said.

"Ah, Jesus, man, I knew there was a catch," I sighed.

"No, no, hear me out. I really want you to do one of your trademark concept reviews. Those always get tons of hits. People love them and hate them," he said.

"Ryan, that cow is dried up. It's Gordita meat. I've even done the I'm-not-going-to-do-a-concept-review-anymore concept review," I said.

"Hear me out. I'm seeing a comeback for one of your zany characters," Ryan said, making stupid TV-producer gestures with his hands. "I'm seeing the interpretive dancer Santa Schultz, the Revolutionary War soldier Ham Grass, advice columnist Professor Rok, Diapers the glam-loving lab monkey, Justin Davies the bass player of The Hold My Coat, The Bummelgörk, Kelly the Masseuse, Volodrag the Yugoslavian sycophant, Paul Bunyan, Wolfie. Besides, you promised me the Franz Ferdinand review months ago."

He had a point. I had procrastinated on a promise. I looked up the aisle of the bus and spotted Ott hunched over a laptop, biting his tongue and copying studiously from a Thesaurus. No, no, Franz Ferdinand was the perfect vehicle for a comeback. I'm half Hungarian. My family had two dogs named Huszar. I've been looking for a way to work schnauzers and Magyar into a review.

It didn't have to be that contrived. The parallels were fluorescent: Franz and I were both stubbornly nostalgic for the decade-gone heights of Britpop. In their silk button-downs and slickly combed hair, the band mimicked the gauche decadence of Suede to such a point that it appeared they were wearing Anderson and Butler's hand-me-down menswear. Each song on their self-titled debut catwalk swaggered with sucked-in cheeks like Alex James' effortless bounce on Blur's "Girls & Boys". If that sounds too hopelessly recent and uncool for the hipsters, I could go obtuse and say Franz Ferdinand revive the sounds of the John Cale-era Squeeze or the New York never-weres The Necessaries. I could erroneously throw Franz Ferdinand in with the recent dance-punk, freak-shit, whatever "scene." But I'm calling a spade a spade. Call it Scotpop if you feel uncomfortable.

Not content to kickstart their career on an album laden mostly with potential, the Glaswegians have banged out a celebratory LP with lyrics bearing surprising satire, wit, and unabashed romance. On the upcoming single, "Dark of the Matinee", Alexander Kapranos positions himself as a bitter cynic who eventually gives in to fame (though it may be, as the title suggests, in the dimmer regions of the spotlight) after being charmed by an attractive optimist, and, one would imagine, the unapologetic funk of the track itself. By the last verse, Kapranos imagines himself smiling wide, sitting with Abba-loving AM talk show host Terry Wogan. With their meteoric rise, Franz Ferdinand could very well be within a year of it. They're poised to be the next Duran Duran or the next Pulp. Or they could be the next Menswear. In any case, it will be a spectacle.

"Jacqueline" opens the album deceivingly with gentle acoustic strums and student poem prattle before raygun guitars and splashing cymbals annihilate any notion of plaintive reflection. Kaparanos soon blurts phrases like "it's so much better on holiday," "I'm so drunk I don't mind if you kill me," "I'm alive, I'm alive," and "we need the money." The pace never lets up. Even their breakthrough single, "Take Me Out", blatantly changes its mind from Pixies-like pop to squiggly guitar disco a quarter of the way through. Only on "Cheating on You" do the drums drop their high-hat riding for stuttering punk.

Franz Ferdinand rarely stray far from the dueling-guitars-with-occasional-keyboard approach, granting even the bounciest dance floor numbers pleasantly rough edges, but the final two tracks peak with greater arrangement and studio flourish. Flashy flanger-flecked guitar and layered, lachrymose keyboards add an epic air to the tale of confused post-relationship emotions of "Come on Home", while "40 Ft" tiptoes in on spy guitars. Like the overlooked brilliance of Parklife's Side B, the song turns back to triumphant, operatic music spiked with pessimism and noise. Even Damon Albarn's beloved melodica makes an appearance 2½ minutes in.

Like all lasting records, Franz Ferdinand steps up to the plate and boldly bangs on the door to stardom. There's no consideration for what trends have just come and gone. There's no waffling or concessions for people who won't get it. As with all great entertainment, it will divide opinion. I honestly couldn't remember Volodrag, The Hold My Coat, Santa Schultz, or the bands in whose reviews they appeared. I'd made that stuff up to amuse myself during boring albums. As I told Ryan, Franz Ferdinand didn't need a concept. We would all remember this one. Like that wizard's cap.

Iain Moffat, Play Louder, February 6, 2004

Here it is then: The Most Important Album of The Year. Alright, so that's maybe something of an overstatement, but, if there's one band that can be said to have had the kind of galvanising effect not seen since The Strokes first turned up, it's the Ferds, as, wisely, nobody seems to have taken to calling them. After all, 'Darts Of Pleasure' won the kind of across-the-board acclaim seldom afforded to indie bands these days, getting year-end plaudits in pretty much every publication you care to mention other than Horse & Hound (yes, this one included), and their gatecrashing of the top ten has singlehandedly kick-started the biggest sudden storming of the mainstream by alt.types since about 1996, so the expectation surrounding it's kind of understandable if a little unfair.

But now the good news. Franz Ferdinand are, in fact, more than up to the task in hand, and they've produced a debut album that an awful lot of people are going to have an awful lot of love for for a very long time yet. It's difficult to remember the last time a band turned up that was this uncompromising and fully-formed, and even harder to recall the last time such a combo touched a nerve with the public. Nonetheless, 'Take Me Out' already sounds like a classic, ingeniously being exactly the sort of song that desperately needed to be on 'Room On Fire' for the first 55 seconds before collapsing fluidly into rabid, jerky funk, and taking a decidedly unorthodox approach to the whole business of rejection. It's a somewhat awkward affair, certainly, but the real charm at the heart of Franz Ferdinand lies in their knack of being both gangly and gangy - they can sing about university campuses without evoking the hideous embarrassment of a 'Whipping Piccadilly', they can, bizarrely, refer to drinking champagne and salmon in German... hell, they can even do gay perfectly ('Michael') without frightening the horses, which, for a band forged in the flames of the toilet circuit, is still, even post-Hidden Cameras, pretty much unheard of. There's a genuine discomfort and terrific us-against-the-world feel to 'Franz Ferdinand' (especially the live favourite 'Matinee'), but it'll still be taken to the world's heart as if it was by, say, Pulp.

Mind you, even if the lyrics weren't so striking - which, and there's no getting away from it, they really are, what with the first namecheck of Terry Wogan we can ever remember and a penchant for crackling circularity a la early Idlewild - this would still be a magnificently memorable piece of work. 'Tell Her Tonight' is a breakneck holleralong replete with some virtually Super Furry harmonies, '40 ft' is the stuff of dirty, dangerous carnival carnality, 'Jacqueline' flickers wildly with the energies of vintage 2-Tone... you get the idea. Besides, there's a brilliantly enveloping biliousness to Alex's unmistakable singing, and a jagged fascination underlying Nick's guitar work throughout. Fearsomely post-post-punk, appealingly brazen, and ambitiously tight, they have indeed made The Album That Saved Indie. Worship!

Adrien Begrand, Pop Matters, March 19, 2004

You can't go a month or two these days without hearing about yet another band of post punk revisionists that has come along, as young artists with a fixation on the sound of late '70s/early '80s new wave has supplanted the "new garage" fad of the last three years, and for good reason, as the music is clever, melodic, fashionable, and above all else, danceable. Yet no matter who comes along, the same question always comes up: "Are they better than Interpol?" Throughout 2003, the reigning kings of New York indie rock, were joined by a host of other, like-minded bands: among others, there were the shameless Cure clones The Rapture and Hot Hot Heat, the simpler, more easygoing Stills, and the talented, yet tragically underrated Elefant. As earnest as those bands are, though, nobody has come around with a record boasting the potential of scoring a big time hit. Until now, that is.

2003 was a terrible year for British rock, as the best new UK music has come from urban, hip-hop influenced artists like The Streets and Dizzee Rascal, while rock mainstays Radiohead and Blur merely went through the motions, releasing disappointingly bland albums. If it weren't for the drunken charm of The Libertines (yeah, I know, technically a 2002 release), the goofy fun of The Darkness, and a very solid new album by Muse, there wasn't much to get excited about, as far as Brit rock was concerned. Enter Scotland's Franz Ferdinand, who in a matter of months, have already exploded in the UK, been deified by the British music press, and have signed a $1.5 million licensing deal with Epic Records in America.

Much has been made of Interpol's homage to Ian Curtis and Joy Division in their music, and although Franz Ferdinand's music is not as close to Interpol and Joy Division as some people have noted, their very odd choice of a band name echoes that of Joy Division. Of course, Joy Division took its name from the name used by Nazis for concentration camp brothels during World War II. Franz Ferdinand, likewise, is named after Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose 1914 assassination in Sarajevo ignited the first World War. Why a bunch of effete Glaswegian art students would name their hip rock band that is anybody's guess.

So what does Franz Ferdinand bring to the table, besides the silly moniker? To put it simply, their new self-titled album is the most musically rich, catchy, smartly written "new new wave" record since Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights. However, the one thing that separates this band from the rest of their peers is, these boys can kick some serious ass. Unlike the majestic, chiming, echoing sounds of Interpol, Franz Ferdinand packs a huge wallop on record: the sound is booming at times, as jarring guitar licks by Nick McCarthy and guitarist/singer Alex Kapranos slice through the pulsating beats of drummer Paul Thomson. What dominates this album, though, is the bass playing of Bob Hardy. His melodic bass lines, situated right up front in the mix, almost drowning out the guitars, carry each song, ranging in style from dub-inspired sounds (think Paul Simonon of The Clash), to straight disco, to simpler, Buzzcocks style punk.

The songs themselves are just as varied, the band brashly displaying their range on the album. "Tell Her Tonight" starts off sounding inspired by Madness and Wire simultaneously, with its ska feel, and the sneered phrase, "But she saw it," that ends every line, but it suddenly breaks into a melodic chorus that smacks of British rock circa 1965 (in fact, very similar to what The Coral is doing these days). "Auf Asche", with its keyboard-driven melody, is all-out disco, while the melodic punk of "Cheating on You", conversely, is much more aggressive guitar rock. On "Darts of Pleasure", the song erupts, from out of nowhere, into a German chorus ("Ich heisse Superfantastisch! Ich trinke Schampus mit Lachsfisch!"), for seemingly no reason at all. The fascinating "This Fire" combines a slick post punk guitar riff, Thomson's relentless dance beat, brilliant '60s style vocal harmonies in the verses, and a contagious rave-up chorus of "This fire is out of control/ I'm going to burn this city/ Burn this city!"

If there's one song that has a chance at breaking the band in North America, it's the sensational single "Take Me Out", which peaked at Number Two in the UK earlier this year. Opening with a Who style flourish of power chords, the song kicks off into a fast, Strokes-inspired melody, as Kapranos cryptically sings, "I'm just a cross-hair/ I'm just a shot away from you." Then, less than a minute in, the song abruptly downshifts, as Thomson guides the band to a more deliberate pace, as the quartet launches into a relentless, pounding garage rock-meets-disco stomp for the rest of the way. Ridiculously simple and undeniably catchy, it's one of the most enjoyable rock songs to come out in the past year.

As catchy as those songs are, Franz Ferdinand's real strength is in Kapranos's lyrics. Several songs on the album are quite straightforward, even bordering on banal, but there are moments of sheer passion, brilliance, and wit, the likes of which we haven't seen since the glory days of Britpop (think Pulp's Different Class and Blur's The Great Escape). "Jacqueline" begins with a McCartney-like acoustic interlude and a character sketch depicting the boredom of office life ("Jacqueline was 17/ Working on a desk/ When Ivor/ Peered above a spectacle/ Forgot that he had wrecked a girl") and the joy of days off ("It's always better on holiday"), as Kapranos facetiously declares at the end, "I'm alive/ And how I know it/ But for chips and for freedom/ I could die." Meanwhile, there's the erotically charged "Darts of Pleasure" ("You can feel my lips undress your eyes") and "Michael", which has Kapranos obsessing about a man, his physical desire made palpable ("You're the boy with all the leather hips/ Sticky hair, sticky hips/ Stubble on my sticky lips"). Most startling is "Dark of the Matinee", as Kapranos shows a Jarvis Cocker-esque ability to depict teen lust and longing, as two uniformed kids (boy/girl? boy/boy? The ambiguous sexuality is delicious) scramble through the rigid, echoing halls of their school in search of some privacy, somewhere, anywhere: "You take your white finger/ Slide the nail under the top and bottom buttons of my blazer/ Relax the fraying wool, slacken ties/ And I'm not to look at you in the shoe, but the eyes, find the eyes."

Although there are times when you find yourself wishing there were more songs on the album with such strong lyrical content, and despite the presence of "Auf Asche", which is a bit of an awkward fit, this is still a very taut, confident album. Franz Ferdinand show refreshing audacity on their first full-length release, and with the talent these boys possess, the Interpol comparisons should soon be a distant memory. This excellent album is just the beginning, and it's enough to convince people there's still hope for British rock yet.

Barry Walters, Rolling Stone, Issue 947, April 29, 2004

Franz Ferdinand's first gig was for an all-female art exhibit; the aim of the Glasgow band was to make the patrons dance. That just about sums up this photogenic foursome, whose mix of arch lyrics and catchy but decidedly raw dance rock unites the cerebral with the physical in the English art-school tradition. For once, the inevitable U.K.-press hype is justified: Franz Ferdinand's debut draws from beloved Brit pop and post-punk bands without the usual plagiarism. Favoring sweaty, uncertain rhythms over cold, processed beats, the album remains true to the band's original goal. Singer Alex Kapranos proclaims pithy quips of seduction and abandonment while nervous guitars and loose drums clang and bash. In "Take Me Out," he yearns to be picked up, murdered or both, as the band abruptly shifts from a nervous sprint to a slower, funky lashing. Louche boys with good taste, Franz Ferdinand rock as if their haberdashery depended on it.

Thomas Bartlett, Salon.com

No one likes critical consensus, but lukewarm is as far as anyone has managed to stray from the universal tone of heated adulation in discussing Franz Ferdinand. And I can't even manage to temper my praise that much. These guys are good. Perhaps not good enough to live up to their hubristic, epoch-shifting name, but good enough that, of all the self-consciously backward-looking bands of the last few years who have sought and nearly achieved world domination (the Strokes, Interpol, the White Stripes, the Rapture, etc.), only Interpol sounds as good -- and in a pinch, I'd opt for Franz's wit over Interpol's solemn cool. Frontman Alex Kapranos is irresistible. He has some of Jim Morrison's portentous swagger, some of Jarvis Cocker's fiercely articulate narrative skill and a talent for twisted, memorable phrases ("You can feel my lips undress your eyes"). And he can switch without warning into an unexpected, fragile falsetto, which he uses to great effect on the chorus of this song. "Come on Home" is my favorite track today, but the album is packed with great songs, especially "Darts of Pleasure," "Take Me Out," "40" and "Jacqueline".

© Frank Steven Groen