Franz Ferdinand — Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Domino/Sony

Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

01/27/2009 12:38pm

This Glaswegian band's 2004 self-titled debut and its 2005 You Could Have It So Much Better follow-up were personal top 10 albums in their respective release years. But the four-year gap to get to Tonight: Franz Ferdinand only built hopes and expectations that definitely aren't met here.

The quartet promised a groovier sound this time, and they achieved it. But if I wanted to hear "groovy," I'd hang out with Tommy Chong. Keyboards are much more evident throughout the record than they have been in the past, but instead of adding something, they detract from what Franz Ferdinand did best: make dance music that still rocked with lots of guitars.

You might think album opener and first single "Ulysses" is a little slower and funkier than what the band have done in the past — and it is — but it still acts as a sturdy bridge between the past and present approaches. "Turn It On" comes across well and "No You Girls" sounds like INXS 20 years later, but I'm OK with that.

But aside from "Bite Hard," which starts as a ballad and then picks up to be perhaps the best of the 12 songs on the disc, things sag considerably from the fourth track on. "What She Came For" worked much better when I saw these guys live in December than it does on record, and the album peters out uneventfully with the quieter "Dream Again" and the slow, acoustic "Katherine Kiss Me."

Franz played warm-up shows in small venues late last year to get the new songs down in anticipation of playing large theatres and arenas in 2009. But unless they come up with more satisfying for their next album, they might not have a choice but to start slogging it out on the club scene again.

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