Franz Ferdinand - TheFallen

Fri 6th Jan, 2006 in Music Reviews

It’s OK, it’s been a few months now. You can admit it.

Do You Want To, the first single from Franz Ferdinand’s ‘difficult’ second album, You Could Have it so Much Better, was crap.

Sure, the severely tongue-in-cheek video of the band camping it up with glamour girls was a bit of fun (if not extremely grating), but the actual song itself wasn’t much chop. There was the painful “lucky, lucky, you’re so lucky” bit, the mindless “do do do do” refrain that lodged in your brain semi-permanently but above all, and most disturbingly, the bitter feeling in your mouth that the band’s eponymous debut – complete with hits Take Me Out, Darts of Pleasure, This Fire and Michael - saw them put all their Scottish eggs in the one basket.

Of course, the story has a happy ending. It turns out Do You Want To was merely a glitch in the robot planned for Franz Ferdinand world domination, as Australian radio-only single and album opener The Fallen (not to be confused with current UK single, the lush Walk Away) is a true gem, and one of the finest tracks the band has released in its short career thus far.

All the familiar Franz trademarks are here – the angular guitar licks traded by Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy, the pulsating disco bass line by Bob Hardy and drummer Paul Thompson’s.. well.. ability to make fedoras and braces essential fashion items. Even with all the now-familiar elements in place, The Fallen seems to rise above the band’s other songs as everything just falls into place nicely. From the frenetic opening, to the eventual “la la la” refrain – which normally sounds clichéd, but here sounds exciting and fresh – to the band’s trying-to-dumb-down-the-real-intellect-here lyrics. There’s a reference to British supermarket chain Tesco, to sly references to Kapranos’ real-life mates back home in Glasgow.

Those put off by the first single can come back now. It’s safe.

regular programming in the Franz Ferdinand machine has re-commenced