Franz Ferdinand

Redux, Reuse, Recycle: Scottish New Wave rockers dance past the sophomore curse

In our current era of resurgent New Wave, it’s hard to argue that Franz Ferdinand isn’t doing things the right way. With a sound that’s just British enough, just hi-hat-heavy enough, just homoerotic enough, just horny enough, just bad-hair enough and just catchy enough, they’ve managed to live the enviable double life of scoring the big Grammy-invitation hit while still holding cred with all but the most success-phobic indie fans. And yet, if one were taking bets on whether Franz Ferdinand would smack up against the sophomore slump’s dreaded wall, the odds would have to be pretty short.

Along the lines of The Strokes’ Room on Fire, You Could Have It So Much Better will likely be tagged a disappointment simply for failing to significantly evolve, and as with Room on Fire, that’s a wrongheaded criticism. Aside from better production values, little has changed about the Scotsmen’s formula: still present is the band’s jerky swagger and the tendency to switch tempo mid-song, as the group doesn’t hesitate to recycle the exhilarating twist that pushed “Take Me Out” onto radio playlists. Skeptics will accuse Franz Ferdinand of trying to leech off its own single, but repetition proves that it’s a pretty sweet gimmick, with similarly jarring transitions saving tracks like “Do You Want To” and “Well That Was Easy” from what could’ve easily been dull ends.

Elsewhere the band gets ahead of its modern-rock peers by being more ebullient than Interpol, less snide than Hot Hot Heat, more feminine than Modest Mouse and less mall-ready than The Killers. “You’re the Reason I’m Leaving” and “This Boy” flail about atop a surfy riff meaner than the one in “Take Me Out;” “Walk Away” scavenges all the best parts from Franz’s countrymen predecessors Orange Juice; and drummer Paul Thomson puts machine-like rhythms under movers like “What You Meant” and the title track.

As far as new directions, two slowish numbers find the band sounding surprisingly like The Kinks, one of which is a plaintive transatlantic love letter from one FF singer to another (The Fiery Furnaces’ Eleanor Friedberger). The album-closing “Outsiders” portends a tempting future, as the band delves more deeply than ever into the dance-pop territory of Duran Duran, embellishing its already discotheque-ready sound with extra synth squiggles and bass pops. Just as early-’80s New Wave morphed into the keyboard-fetishizing era of New Pop, “Outsiders” suggests Franz Ferdinand might be leading the way toward a further re-blurring of the lines between rock and dance music.

In order to remain out front, however, You Could Have It So Much Better will need to give birth to another single strong enough to dispel any one-hit-wonder prejudices and put Franz Ferdinand on a level high enough to challenge The Killers for modern-rock’s gold belt. By that criterion, it’s ominous that the album, despite its consistency, doesn’t have any obvious highlights; although for a genre that recently made Weezer’s dreadful “Beverly Hills” a smash hit, my DJ skills are obviously on the wane. Thus, the Ferdinand boys may be in for a backlash, albeit an undeserved one: their second album proves the New-New Wave really could have it so much better.