But follow up “The Academy Award” stands as one of the most interesting songs on the album. “Finally” isn’t able to continue the energy of its predecessors with its clunky structure and its bland, repetitive lyrics about being fine in the spring sunshine. Rounding out the opening trio, “Paper Cages” invites us to “step out” of the social constructs and barriers that keep us from being free, and they make it sound so easy. “Lazy Boy” continues the groovy opening with some of the best guitar riffs of the album, combining “Funkytown” funk chords with surf-y tremolo picking. The album starts off strong with the title track featuring the eerie Shepard tone effect, literally making the song “Always Ascending” as the familiar disco rock takes over, bringing to mind LCD Soundsystem.
But despite some missteps, Always Ascending features enough excellent dance tracks, experimentation, and optimism to keep Franz Ferdinand fun and relevant a decade and a half into their career.
So this should be one of the top 10 albums of the year, right? Well, it’s not that. Despite losing a key piece of their identity in Nick McCarthy, the group journeys on with Always Ascending.Īnd instead of making a split with the past and just looking to their present art, their marketing compared it to that classic debut, calling Always Ascending “as invigorating an album as the band’s glistening debut”. Now later in their career, however, that comparison becomes even harder. However, the group has consistently produced excellent dance rock since their debut, keeping them from one-hit-wonder status. It’s a hard hurdle to overcome, and always a blessing and a curse. Scottish dance-rockers Franz Ferdinand will always be compared to their masterpiece from 14 years ago. But the words are there anyway, just to punctuate the playful dance between “making a move” and “waiting it out to not mess it all up.” The tension in the tight, playful guitar/bass lines and the pounding disco drums of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” are so perfect, it hardly needs words to express the nervous energy of the club scene in which our narrator agonizes over expressing his feelings. All it takes is the first three rapid strums of the guitar, and listeners’ ears perk up for what still holds as one of the best dance rock songs of the millennium.
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