Franz Ferdinand

I remember when this album came out it didn't leave my car's CD player for over a year. Really annoyed my friends.

Being familiar with Franz Ferdinand's one hit, "Take Me Out," I knew what to expect going into this album. I like "Take Me Out," but if it's the band's only hit, surely the rest of the album is gonna be mid at best, right? After all, I've heard a bit of The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, and don't seem to like them, either. The opener, "Jacqueline," really wasn't what I was expecting. A calmer acoustic intro before going fully into the song. And it's a good song at that. Nothing like what I've heard from the aforementioned bands of a similar genre. The second song, "Tell Her Tonight," is even better. It felt like Talking Heads if they got their start 30 years later, when all the indie bands were imitating punk instead of inventing it. "Take Me Out" is good, too, though I've heard that song at least 1,000 times already. "The Dark of the Matinée" is where things started to take a turn for the worse. That song felt like something off of AM, an album that I actively dislike. Other than the tempo/time change towards the end, it just felt generic. And, unfortunately, that goes for most of the following tracks, too. There were some cool things happening, but they were infrequent and spread out across already boring songs. So, was my initial assumption correct? I think so. It's an okay album---one you might like if you like the hit single. ----- #0016 Heard on: 2 Oct. 2026 Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (183 / 336) Favorite track: Tell Her Tonight Least favorite track: The Dark of the Matinée

Franz Ferdinand’s debut sounds effortless in the way that only music built from a great many good decisions can sound effortless. That was the thing I kept coming back to throughout the record. The songs move quickly, the guitars are sparse, the lyrics are often remarkably economical, and nothing appears to be straining towards importance. Yet virtually every few seconds somebody has made a decision about what not to play, where to leave a gap, when to interrupt a pattern, when to allow a part back in and when to stop altogether. It is extreme economy, brilliant choices masquerading as effortless pop. That feels especially important because one of my own working aphorisms is that hard is easy and easy is hard. Complication is comparatively straightforward. If something feels insufficiently interesting, add another guitar, another harmony, another chord, another fill. Simplicity requires judgement. Once you start taking things away, every surviving element has to justify itself. Franz Ferdinand sound as though they understand this instinctively. The guitars do not really behave as conventional lead and rhythm guitars. They behave as pieces of geometry. A figure appears, gets shortened, disappears, comes back at a slightly different angle, is answered by something else. Even when there is something approaching a solo, it tends to feel like an extension of the riff rather than somebody stepping forward to demonstrate virtuosity. Excitement comes through subtraction and addition. That immediately places them somewhere around Gang of Four and Wire, but as the album unfolded I started hearing a more complicated lineage. Nile Rodgers has talked about Chic as his strange extrapolation of Roxy Music, and once I put that thought next to Franz Ferdinand the relationship became difficult to unhear. Early Roxy had the art-school abstraction, glamour and oddness; Chic took glamour and artifice and organised them around rhythmic economy; post-punk stripped guitar music down until the spaces between the notes became as important as the notes themselves. Franz Ferdinand seem accidentally to occupy a place somewhere between those ideas. Not stylistically in any neat family-tree sense. More in the way they think about arrangement. Make the surface slightly strange. Make the structure exact. Let the body understand the music before the brain has quite finished parsing it. There is a Glasgow line in there too. Orange Juice had already established that indie intelligence did not require standing still with folded arms. Franz Ferdinand feel like a sharper, less whimsical version of that instinct: Edwyn Collins with the arched eyebrow but also with his hand on his chin, considering whether the arrangement could lose another four notes. The requirement that people should dance is not a slogan imposed on the music. It is built into the construction. “Jacqueline” announces most of this almost immediately. Kapranos begins in a surprisingly dreamy register, thoughtful and inward, before the guitars arrive with that hard, angular attack. Then his voice changes as well. The private voice becomes what I kept calling his loudhailer voice: more declamatory, more saturated, more public. In a matter of seconds the song has moved from reflection to attack. That vocal sound turned out to be one of the album’s great production decisions. Rock music so often puts the overdrive on the guitars and leaves the voice comparatively pristine. Franz Ferdinand frequently seem to reverse that relationship. The guitars stay dry, clipped and sharply delineated while Kapranos’s voice is allowed to push into saturation. The important thing is that the saturation behaves dynamically. When he drops back, the voice becomes cleaner. When he pushes, he does not simply become much louder; the signal becomes denser, rougher and more compressed. The emotional intensity rises without the apparent level having to leap correspondingly. His effort becomes timbre. That is what I had been hearing when I called it the loudhailer voice before I had quite worked out why. The recording chain seems to become part of the performance. Kapranos can go from intimate to declamatory while maintaining a comparatively consistent loudness, and when he really leans into the vocal the sound itself starts to protest. The band remains controlled. The human being overloads. That turns out to be a useful way of understanding the whole album. The people inside these songs are often spectacularly less disciplined than the musicians playing them. They are lustful, jealous, self-curating, possessive, embarrassed, self-dramatising, sometimes emotionally primitive and frequently ridiculous. A great deal of the record is driven by undeveloped, low-empathy lust: narrators who are intensely aware of what they want and rather less aware of the autonomous inner life of the person they want it from. Kapranos is extremely good at writing those people. He does not offer detailed theses. He is sharp. In, out, make the point, go. The lyrics work with the same economy as the guitars, and much of the pleasure comes from recognising the gap between how composed the narrator imagines himself to be and how undignified he actually appears. “Tell Her Tonight” is perhaps the first moment where the famous idea of making music for girls to dance to becomes completely tangible. The lyric is deliberately slight: somebody has been found out, there is a little evasiveness, and eventually some sort of coming clean. That is enough. The work is elsewhere. The arrangement uses subtraction as attraction, almost subtraction as addiction. A clipped figure appears and vanishes before it has quite satisfied you. Something else snaps into the space. The groove depends on withholding information. The song becomes more compelling because it refuses to fill itself in. Then “Take Me Out” takes the same logic and applies it structurally on a much larger scale. The extended introduction gives almost no clue about what is going to happen. It establishes one musical world and appears perfectly happy to remain there. Then the machine seems to slow. That is a better description than saying the song changes gear. It is as if the mechanism has decelerated enough for you suddenly to see the moving parts, and one by one those parts start clicking into place. Click. Click. Click. The famous riff does not feel unveiled so much as assembled in front of you. Learning that the lyric was conceived as a romantic stand-off between two people who are both waiting for the other to make the first move made the structure seem even more elegant. The song itself gets locked into that condition. Two people know what is happening. Neither wants to expose themselves. Somebody has to move first. The riff becomes the stand-off. It is a masterpiece, and one of those pieces of pop where analysis only increases the pleasure because none of the mechanism interferes with the immediate fact that the thing simply works. “The Dark of the Matinée” produced one of the more personal recognitions of the listen. The opening riff has always reminded me melodically of a Russian folk tune I sang as a child. Not merely something vaguely “Eastern European” in character: there is a specific melodic recognition buried in there for me, although I have not identified the tune. Then the lyric gave me another kind of recognition altogether. I have been the person in this song. I have timed journeys in order to bump into somebody accidentally. I have engineered coincidence. I have then presented a carefully selected version of myself designed to appear naturally compatible: here are the things I dislike, here are the things I will therefore never become, please notice how accidentally perfect I am for you. Courtship as self-curation. It is an embarrassingly accurate observation. You are not exactly lying. You are selecting. You illuminate the qualities that might fit the other person and leave the rest in shadow. The entire enterprise depends on making effort look effortless. Then the narrator’s fantasy extends forward until he is imagining the future retrospective in which he is successful enough to be talking about all this with Terry Wogan. That is spectacularly funny. Not stadiums, immortality, Bowie or world conquest. Terry Wogan. It is a perfectly modest British fantasy of fame and also a beautifully observed bit of romantic self-consciousness: you are still trying to arrange an accidental meeting with somebody and have somehow already moved on to scripting the interview you will give years later about how it all began. All in all, “The Dark of the Matinée” is an irresistible piece of pop with admirable eccentricity. It is catchy without having been streamlined into normality. “Auf Achse” deepened another theme: imperfection as a creative mechanism. Nick McCarthy’s melody apparently originated in an imperfect attempt to reproduce something he remembered from German television. The mistake became the music. That reminded me of the early Human League and the curious pleasure of imperfect renditioning. Their “Get Carter” instrumental is almost nothing at all: a single thin monophonic line carrying an entire cinematic reset before the darkness of “I Am the Law”. With “Auf Achse” the process is different, but related. Here imperfect memory turns into invention. The lyric also contains perhaps the funniest mismatch between arrangement and emotional state on the album. The narrator is consumed by unrequited lust and jealousy and inflates the whole experience into religious martyrdom. His suffering becomes crucifixion. The person he desires has a sexual history and he reacts internally as though he has been nailed to the cross by it. Then the chorus punctures the melodrama. She is not actually that special. Look what you have done to yourself. This is excellent writing about a terrible internal narrator. That became important to me later when I thought about why Stella Gibbons felt like such an appropriate presence around this album. Gibbons is an extraordinarily good writer impersonating bad writing with extraordinary precision. Kapranos is not doing quite the same thing, but there is a family resemblance: he writes extremely well about people whose internal voices are terrible. They exaggerate. They self-mythologise. They turn lust into destiny, jealousy into martyrdom and embarrassment into tragedy. So I ended up with perhaps my favourite image of the morning: exquisitely clipped guitars while the man inside the song is emotionally draped across a chaise longue shouting I AM UNDONE. Art-school arch. That word matters. The album is arch, but not cynical. The feelings are not fake. The record understands that human beings can experience something intensely and still look ridiculous while doing it. “Cheating on You” opens with delicious stop-time and then simply goes. Art-school Buzzcocks. The same irresistible forward drive, but with a little more arrangement-consciousness and an extra layer of studied pose. Buzzcocks often sound as though desire has simply blurted itself out at speed. Franz Ferdinand sound as though desire has put on a good jacket first. “This Fire” gave me an unexpected rush of nostalgia. Its opening could have come directly from the late-70s post-punk vocabulary I first heard as a teenager: Wire, Gang of Four, guitars being used to cut space rather than fill it. It made me think about one of the pleasures of Britpop. Britpop had frequently reached back into roughly 1966–74 and made that vocabulary sound current again. Franz Ferdinand were doing something similar with 1978–80. That was the pleasure of 2004 more broadly. It was not only Franz Ferdinand. There was the New Yorkshire movement as well, with bands such as ¡Forward, Russia! and Buen Chico drawing from related stores of wiry, rhythm-first guitar music. Old musical languages had become available again without sounding embalmed. “This Fire” did not make me nostalgic because it sounded old. It made me nostalgic because it reminded me what it felt like when a musical grammar I had learned at fifteen suddenly sounded new again. The multiple voices in the song also reconnect strongly with post-punk. The second voice has a quality of underlying hysteria. It does not simply harmonise the lead. It sounds like another emotional system leaking into the arrangement. The composed principal vocal maintains the pose while something increasingly agitated is happening behind it. That suits a lyric in which desire is again represented as something consuming and not especially rational. The ending eventually gives itself over to the metaphor. It is a bit literal, but gorgeous. The control finally yields to the thing it has been containing. “Darts of Pleasure” returns to flirtation as pursuit. Flirting becomes almost a form of hunting: thrown signals, tests, challenges, tiny attacks. Seduction as target practice. The arrangement is brilliantly compressed. Then came one of the stupidest and most satisfying moments of the listen: Duolingo unexpectedly became useful. I understood enough of the German coda to realise that the final display of continental sophistication is, in essence, a man announcing his own Superfantastic magnificence while drinking champagne with salmon. Years of language learning. Vindicated by Franz Ferdinand. That makes the end of the song funnier because the supposedly cosmopolitan flourish is really another glimpse into the narrator’s absurd self-advertisement. Beneath the immaculate flirting is a private internal commercial for himself. I was genuinely pleased that I had done Duolingo. “Michael” then takes the record’s obsession with lust to its purest conclusion. The introduction has tremendous propulsion, and the lyric is a man lusting after another man with no softening, no coyness and no camp framing whatsoever. That struck me because songs about male desire for men are still often mediated through some additional theatrical device. “Michael” simply gives the desire the same physical force heterosexual lust receives elsewhere on the album. Testosterone singing about testosterone. I actually arrived at that description before noticing the lyric explicitly foregrounding the narrator’s masculinity, which made the reading feel even more secure. I had heard it in the delivery first. And the lyric eventually reaches complete brain failure. The narrator is no longer considering lust. The lust itself is shouting. That is why the enormous overdriven vocal sound works so well. The guitars remain relatively clipped and precise while the human voice becomes the distorted element. Again, the machine stays disciplined while the person inside it loses higher cognitive function. “Come on Home” surprised me by being one of the most emotionally mature songs on the record. I heard in it both the freedom and the ache of a long-distance relationship. The distance gives each person autonomy and a life of their own, but the same distance generates longing. The central contradiction is brutally concise: come home, but do not forget to leave. That is not emotional inconsistency. Both desires can be true. I can want closeness and still need independence. I can miss somebody while valuing the life that exists when they are not physically present. The song understands that intimacy and autonomy can pull against each other without either one exposing the other as fraudulent. And despite all that emotional ambivalence, it is ridiculously danceable. That itself says something about the achievement of the whole record. “Uncomplicated propulsion” sounds as though it means “simple music”, but the propulsion only feels uncomplicated because so many difficult decisions have been made and hidden. Every gap, entry, rhythmic accent and subtraction has been judged. Hard is easy. Easy is hard. By the time “40′” arrives, the record can begin almost skeletally and then simply acquire posture. The opening gives you bones; the second half of the introduction starts to stride and swagger. Again, additions feel dramatic precisely because the starting point is so reduced. The lyric becomes dreamier and more abstract than most of what precedes it. Earlier songs tend to offer recognisable little social situations: pursuit, embarrassment, jealousy, infidelity, distance, badly managed desire. Here the language begins to float away from anecdote. The structure remains exact while the words become less distinct. It is a good way to leave the album. What ultimately impresses me is not that Franz Ferdinand were clever enough to combine art-school references, post-punk reduction and dance music. Plenty of records are clever. Clever records can be exhausting. This album has the good manners not to demand admiration for its cleverness. Everything keeps cashing out as pleasure: the guitar geometry becomes groove, the production trick becomes vocal excitement, the literary observation becomes a joke, the restraint makes the choruses hit harder. It is arch without being smug, eccentric without becoming difficult, nostalgic in vocabulary without behaving like revivalism. Most importantly, it is fun. One of the best British albums of the early 2000s, I think. An extraordinarily clever record with the good manners to pretend it isn’t.

Tedious stripped down hipster rock that I did not enjoy in 2004 and don't enjoy 22 years later. Feels like it lacks inspiration, and the vocal performance is shit. I hear no art rock or post punk influences. As boring as The Strokes and The Killers. Those 38 minutes felt way, WAY longer than 38 minutes. Definitely will not revisit for a third time. Baffled this is on the list. From perhaps the worst decade in all of Western Popular music, the naughties. After writing my review and after reading the other reviews on here, I feel like I am in a horror movie where everyone else still taking the crazy pills.

Sounds good, downloaded a few songs of theirs.

Great set of songs

I'm a sucker for the garage rock revival era. Nothing but catchy bouncy tunes.

Fun album from the mid 2000s that was better than I thought it would be. They were positioned to be one of the next big things but it didn’t pan out, yet that doesn’t diminish this effort.

Take Me Out is obviously an enduring classic, but I forgot how good this album was from start to finish.

(3/5) Nice. This was fun. It has a kinetic, punchy indie/pop-punk sound to it. I had heard the big hit "Take Me Out" some, so I wasn't entirely blind to them but just added them to the pile of "recommended bands" I haven't pursued because of time and life. Not sure I'll get back to them and I don't begrudge it's inclusion in the list. It 'feels' like a mid-00s band, and maybe because they set a standard I'm only unconsciously aware of? Fine stuff and glad I spent the time to give them a chance. It wasn't a love connection and that's OK.

I remembered them as a slightly smarmy band who did a few good singles and a brilliant album with Sparks, but this was a blast and I enjoyed every minute of it. I liked it so much I listened to all their other albums and they're all pretty good (the second is my least favourite, but it's not bad).

It was great in 2004 and it's great now.

This Indie Rock album feels like being out in a lively city on a Friday night, moving between crowded bars where every conversation, guitar riff and passing face gives the evening a little more momentum. The sharp guitars, driving bass and punchy drums create an energetic, infectious sound that often feels more like straightforward alternative rock than Most other Style mentioned describing it. Alex Kapranos adds a charismatic, slightly cheeky vocal presence, giving the songs personality without slowing their momentum. The tight rhythms make the music feel restless and danceable, while the hooks keep it accessible and memorable. Mostly I feel like part of the night's movement rather than an outsider watching it, carried along by the band's combination of rock energy and rhythmic precision.

First time listening - love the feel of it. Reminds me of being in a sitcom.

A good solid album of mid-2000s indie and one of the best of that era. None of the songs go beyond that for me so think its a solid 3 but not more than that. Happily listened to it and would again.

Rating: 7.5/10 First listen: No Would listen again: Yes Fav track: Take me out (zbog intro-a) ili This fire Comment: Solidan, sranje ime benda

Excelente

Every song is good.

Very of it’s time, but exceptionally catchy. Didn’t think much of them at the time, but that’s more to do with me than them.

kinda fire (get it) but also lowkey gives cuck energy so idk

'songs of my youth'. A catchy and solid album. Lot's of pop appeal.

Overall Rating - 3.23/5 (6.45/10). Other than Take Me Out, it's pretty forgettable mid 2000s indie pop. Nothing particularly bad, but nothing particularly good, either.

Love this album as well! Will have to be a five just because I can't think of another album from this epoch that I love more!

Me when I'm causing catastrophic traffic accidents

Man, I remember when this album came out in the wave of Brit pop rock. It was fun, fresh and full of energy. This is a great album to turn up loud and sing your heart out with, and dance round the house.

This is exactly as I remember, kind of listless rock trying to fill a musical void. Not great.

This was fun and felt quite modern. He's a great singer.

es soso ya de entrada, un rock basiquísimo con alguna q otra variación en los vocales pero un poco monotemático con las letras, añadí 3 canciones de onda xq la verdad m aburrí

Solid album. What stands out to me the most about it is the guitars. I would listen to some of these so gs for the guitar riffs alone. Favorite songs: Jacqueline and Take me Out

Fine album, wouldn't be the same without Take Me Out but still. Shows their sound pretty well.

Just as I remembered it

I have a soft spot for this album because I was obsessed with Franz Ferdinand back in 2022. They were my top Spotify artist that year, I listened to all of their albums including the newer stuff and I even got to see them live. Looking back I'm not really sure why I liked them as much as I did at the time. This band is really not that special for the most part and unfortunately a lot of their music doesn't really hold up for me anymore. That being said, this album specifically holds up pretty well. It's a very consistent album with plenty of memorable tracks including the band's one true hit. I will always love "Take Me Out". Hands down one of the best indie rock hits of this era. I do kinda agree with people who say that the song peaks at the beginning, but who cares the rest of it is good too. “Jacqueline” and “Darts of Pleasure” are also among my favorites too on this album. It’s not a game-changing record but it’s a record of quality nonetheless. Extra half star out of nostalgia. Favorite track: Jacqueline 4.5/5

Another middle school classic lol. Why are most of the first albums from the 2000s? Anyways listening to this reminded me of Daniel Contaldo a lot. The pop punk / alternative sound dominated the 2000s. Unfortunately aside from the big singles it wasn’t really hitting for me Notable tracks : take me out

I love this album. Once the electric guitar starts in the first song "Jacqueline", it feels like a siren calling out to the world to pay attention to the upcoming awesomeness. This just rocks, and at the same time is both a little prickly and a bit danceable. Even the cover is simple and cool. Fantastic album that still holds up. Also, I share my name with one of the songs, and l too will "dance like a beautiful dance whore" from time to time.

Favorite Song: Michael Least Favorite: This Fire

I didnt know take me out was by franz ferdinand. I liked the talking heads esque thing for the second song. It sounds a little like arctic monkeys to me. A little borrrring thoooo. His voice bores me why isnt there any diversity or something?? Also the main guitar is boring and slow AGHHHH THERE IS JUST SOMETHING MISSING U FEEL LIKE THERE IS SOMETHING MISSING! it would sound so good if the drums or something would be more interesting i cant pinpoint it but like its a good FOUNDATION LIKE AS A CONCEPT for an album but it is definitely not a good result of an album.. Ok auf achse is pretty fun with the Ugggggh i am suffering and im only on the fourth song. Who likes this?? Its like tally hall for boring oeple Ok auf achse was pretty fun. Cheating on you sounds pretty good so far. I liked the outro of the last song, not just because the ambum was abt to end but it sounded good lolol. Anyway pretty okay album overall

reminds me of the killers, however not my favorite album so far… the best songs are tell her tonight, 40 and take me out ofc. i liked the german randomly at one point. its okay.

Such great memories from start to finish

Never really been a fan of this specific type of indie rock from the 2000's with a rapid repetitive guitar tone. Arctic Monkeys, the strokes, Franz Ferdinand etc. all do it. This fire is the best example of this. There are moments where it strays away from this slightly and then it is not so bad. Dark of the matinee and especially Auf Asche are examples of this. Those 2 are the standout songs. It is still a valid album. 3 stars

kind of annoying honestly. hard to finish

Agreed.

I like a bit of Franz Ferdinand but a whole album was too much Can't deny they have some absolute bangers on this album. But some of these songs were clearly just filler 3 ⭐️

An indie standard. I actually worked on this record, so I will always have a fondness for it.

“The dark of the matinee”was the only song I really liked

Surprised me. Not bad.

eh

awesome album!

carino davver

she is not the best, but she is there

This album makes me feel like I just died in 1914 and caused the beginning of World War I. Just kidding. This is exactly who Radiohead wishes they were. Indie and experimental all while throwing in a hit single on top of it. Fuck yeah.

Bass goes hard as hell. Another case of rockin music and not my favorite vocals, but I had a good enough time I can slightly overlook it. Take Me Out is so good. Michael? Gay.

Favs: Jacqueline Tell her tonight Auf Achse Cheating on you Come on home

For all the times I've heard 'take me out' this was the first time I voluntarily played it. Not really for me but not terrible to listen to

That one song go hard bruh

Matices por favor!!

Jaunty rock and roll by spiffing British chaps. Hard to define - part rock, part disco, part vaudeville. It angries up the blood in a satisfying way. Take me out is notable for having 3 distinct guitar riffs going at once in places, yet they lock together beautifully to create a sum greater than the parts - easier said than done. Got this shortly after it came out. It's almost a 5.

Not bed

Back to back bangers from this site

I like a couple of the tracks

This album sounds like one song that is 40 min long. I do remember when this band exploded on the scene, and everyone was talking about them. And then Take Me Out was on Guitar Hero, which was also all over campus. But I didn't really get into them. I do distinctly remember raising an eyebrow when I learned there was a band with this name. I guess I don't mind it, but I'm not gonna listen to it again. In travelling down the rabbit hole of other bands that chose names after historical figures or events, I learned today that the Decemberists are named after a failed coup.

Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand (2004) I'm afraid the only song that truly stands out in this is the very famous Take Me Out. The rest was very enjoyable though. ⭐⭐⭐ 6.25/10

No. 437/1001 Jacqueline 3/5 Tell Her Tonight 3/5 Take Me Out 4/5 The Dark of the Matineé 3/5 Auf Achse 3/5 Cheating On You 3/5 This Fire 3/5 Darts Of Pleasure 3/5 Michael 3/5 Come On Home 3/5 40' 3/5 Average: 3,09 Didn't click with me.

I got this album shortly after it was released in 2004 on the strength of Tell Her Tonight and Take Me Out. I think I was just relieved that there were some bands having fun with rock music again -- a genre I largely made little time for at the time. I found another track I liked more than either with "The Dark Of The Matinee," but quickly grew tired of the album's big hit. I'm not sure I played this all the way through at any time after 2004 before now. This style of music was a flash in the pan for me. By the time the Arctic Monkeys came around, I was already bored. This time through, the first three tracks just made me wince a little -- like being faced with an embarrassing story from my past. I did still enjoy The Dark Of The Matinee... there's a little more to it lyrically and musically than the first three tracks. The rest of the record almost felt like listening for the first time it had been so long. Auf Achse is probably the best of the bunch with some good sounds and a nice tune -- kind of reminds me of Blondie's Atomic a little. This Fire is the sort of fun repetitive track they do so well... the sort of repetitive track that I fear would start to feel less fun with repetition. The next best track is probably 40'. Michael is the only song on the 2nd half I don't really care for -- everything else was pretty good. I can see why this stayed on the shelf unplayed for so many years. It's almost disposable music, but I'll keep it around in case I want to remind myself of what passed for a good time in 2004 in another 20 years.

TAKE ME OUT! - Solid album, self titled with different sounds throughout and overall feel good energy.

solid post garage rock album with few highlights!!!

An album of bland pop songs from one of them noughties bands that were hanging on the coat tails of great indie bands of the 80’s and 90’s. Dull and boring

This album is a bop. Lot of energy and a fun listen. Rating: 7/10 Favorite Song: Take Me Out

The singles from this album were so popular and ubiquitous, that it’s hard to remember how fresh this felt in 2004. Britpop was over and several bands, and genres, were competing to be at the top of the alternative heap. And here’s Franz Ferdinand at the helm of the dance-punk revolution. These are songs meant to be danced to at clubs and concerts. Nothing wrong with an album putting out songs meant to be fun and dancey. (They also function well as songs to march to - they keep Marching Time so well, they might as well have been written by John Philip Sousa.) Just seeing the cover of this album put “The Dark of the Matinee” in my head, where it’s been stuck for over 24 hours. It and “Take Me Out” are the best two songs on the album, but they all pretty much follow the same formula so you could pick any track from the list and be happy.

Pretty good when the energy is delivered. Otherwise nothing downright bad but far from the most exciting indie rock of the 2000s. A lot of the time the production feels lost in it's time. Together with the repetitive songwriting it makes for a fun, but not super memorable listen.

Why did this art-fop shit seem "edgy" or whatever back in the day? The biggest risk you faced was falling down in a gutter with a hottie you had nothing in common with and skinning your elbow? But we were alive with it. Or the biggest risk was getting scabies? Or ruining that silk tie you couldn't afford? Or maybe just the hangover.

Some bangers like "Take Me Out" or "Dark of the Matinée". Other hits like "Darts of Pleasure" are slept on. FF cooked with their debut.

Before this project I had never listened to this album. This is the second time and I have to say, the repeat listening is bringing it closer and closer to a 5. It’s really awesome. The variation within songs impressed me the first time. This time, I’m taken with the musicianship, the rhythm, the bass and drums that allow for that variation to occur. My only issue is a lack of coherent vision for the album, I suppose. But maybe that’s just arbitrary. Next time, it’s probably going to be a 5. 4 Boolean: True

One of my favourite albums from my teenage years and still one of the best 00s albums out there and nothing anyone says is gonna change that. Yeah, we all know that they listened to Wire and Gang Of Four, and aren't we all so grateful that you're cool enough to know those bands too! Pretty much every song of its 38 minutes BANGS.

I went into this thinking "oh god, not this shit..." and I LOVE it when I am surprised. What an absolute corker. Gives me Sparks vibes; very cool, very tight, very smart. The rhythm and bass guitarists are DISGUSTINGLY good, I ended up repeating a few tracks out of pure appreciation of certain licks. Whacked straight into my Liked Songs.

This album got me through a lot of late night study sessions freshman year

This has been in heavy rotation for me since it came out. Absolute banger.

Good good good good

This album rips - early 2000s rock that has an almost vintage 70s vibe.

Well... those two songs are definitely popular, and I've heard them many times. But the album as a whole sounds like some kind of incomprehensible mess. I guess this genre just isn't for me.

Não atrelava a Take me Out a esse nome. Nunca ouvi Franz Ferdinand antes. Interessante... Teve muito mais personalidade que outros álbuns da lista, então vai merecer um 4, apesar de eu não ter adicionado nenhuma outra música, Take me Out tankou esse 4.

A classic. I’ll save my paragraphs for songs in the key of life.

Fantastic Album, makes me remember the difference between a good and a great album.

Explosive, fun and endlessly nostialgic for me. I adore this album, and I am so glad I got an excuse to listen to it again

Just never really enjoyed them that much - Take me out was a pain in the arse first time round too.

Esse álbum para mim é um clássico adolescente. "Take me Out" me embala até hoje!

Never really liked these and this album just doesn't do it for me. Feel like they are always trying too hard to be popular. Songs all sound too musch the same. Sorry....

Je connaissais 2 sons dessus et j'aime bien les deux sons, pour ce qui est du reste.. Jsp il y a des fois où sa voix me met mal à l'aise et où je passais un très mauvais moment mais les instrus sont cool dans tous les cas. Du coup j'hésite entre 3 et 2 et vu qu'hier ça m'a empêché d'écouter des trucs mieux que je voulais écouter je suis de mauvaise humeur donc 2 D: (un peu violent mais assumé)

Je m'attendais à détester et en fait c'était très cool ! Après il y a la tax du nom de l'album

I've always liked this album! Super fun sound that's not quite like anything else - not that it's the most unique sound, just that it clearly stands out from most of the other indie rock at the time. Just a really solid album with a bunch of great songs on it - super enjoyable!

Pre-listening: This album shaped the music I listened to in middle school. Take Me Out made me wanna learn how to play guitar. I settled for mastering it on Guitar Hero instead. Should be an easy re-listen. Best: Take Me Out Runner-Up: Cheating On You Third: This Fire Post-listening: It was pretty much as I remembered. Great, upbeat, drum driven music perfect for errands, exercise, and parties. I always envisioned myself listening to this album in a dingy pool hall with checkered floor tiles while drinking cheap beer. Had a harder time finding the pool hall than the cheap beer, but it never hurt to pretend. I think my favorite thing about this band is their minimalist approach where they maximize their sound and layering. The drums always have something going on but never have a choppy sound. The heterophony (new word) is in almost every song on the album but it makes the melody so much more memorable and makes the chorus in each song hit harder. The song styles do get repetitive and that’s the downfall of Franz, but I’ll always love them for what they did for a rap obsessed teen in Iowa; they made rock the focus and opened my ears to show much more. Rating: 8/10 Stars: 4/5

8/10

Decent album.

Talking Heads (more aptly LCD Soundsystem) mixed with 2000s UK vibes. Love the dance-heavy drum patterns. Wished there were more songs with the hook-heavy sections of Take Me Out on here cause it feels scattered in vibes to me (3.5).

A really good album. It starts with "Jacqueline", I thought to myself this is gonna be just another slow, boring, around-the-campfire guitar generic thing, but no. It evolved into an aggressive thing, so I am happy with it. As the album would go on, I found out that I want to listen more and more

Awesome 👌

not rlly my kinda jam

I love Take Me Out and knew and liked the other singles, but no idea why I never picked up the album back in the day, this is great stuff to me.

I'd heard this one some time ago and was happy to revisit. Poppy, upbeat and fun, Franz Ferdinand is good time music with an 80s sensibility that I appreciate. Slightly monotonous, but without a necessary skip in sight, this one rounds up from a 3.5/5 and got a couple of adds to my playlist.

211. Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand (2004) 9.21.26 Variety: 3 Adequacy: 5 Listenability: 5 Uniqueness: 4 Emotionality: 2 = 3.8 rounded up to a 4 "The coldest calm falls through the molten veins/ Cooling all the blood to slush, congeals around again" A few years after I had discovered this rich mine of late 70s and early 80s post-punk to wallow around in, here comes a supposed revival of the same sound. What an embarrassment of riches! Great music coming at me from either end of the timeline! Unfortunately the early 2000s post-punk/ garage goldrush proved a bit more of a mixed bag, with a LOT of generic acts piling on and disappearing just as fast. I think the effects have been sort of ongoing and have mutated quite a bit so that there is still value in them thar hills, even today, but the immediate impact felt more like a bust. The first Franz Ferdinand album, along with the Futureheads ( not on the list but one I think might hold up better) were near the top of the heap of the more post-punk ( read mainly Gang of Four and Wire influences) leaning and the Hives ( one album on the list) and the Strokes ( one album on the list) near leading the more garage leaning bands, though both sides had plenty of elements of each. You also had acts like Interpol ( not on the list) stealing liberally ( though well) from darker acts like joy Division, but I never really saw much Bauhaus, Cure, Banshees, or the like in much of these bands. One trend noticeable about these acts was an almost complete lack of any sort of specific political bent. It was more the sound and in particular the image of those earlier bands that made the most impact ( despite Franz Ferdinand's curious choice of name). So coming from such an outwardly narrow sliver of influences ( there's just as much 60s garage and 70s pub rock influences thrown into this album for good measure) really does give lie to idea of post-punk being any sort of actual genre when so much of it was entirely ignored by these bands. Though I think since then, the vulturism has gone so wide-ranging as to become nearly impossible to pin down a bands influences, resulting in a much wider, but shallower sense of identity, and contributing to the lack of any sort of identifying features for the last few decades. Can you identify what the sound of the 2010s is? I sure can't. Anyway, one thing you'll notice about a lot of the post-punk/ garage revival bands is they mostly have one lone album on the list. I think this is pretty reflective of their impact with almost all of them failing to reach anything approaching the quality of their freshmen attempts. The second Franz Ferdinand album was so disappointing that I just stopped keeping up with them. Ditto for most of these guys. And they were mostly guys. Elastica (one album on the list) was a very early female centric bellwether of the revival, but they fell victim to the same one good album curse. The Hives and Interpol are possibly exceptions as they seem to have been able to continue on with some success even to today, but I still have not heard much beyond the very occasional music video that pops up in my Youtube algorithm. I'm fairly certain I'll enjoy this one though, and it'll likely get me to revisit some of those others who didn't make the list. THE TRACKS "Jacqueline" - One thing that didn't really occur to me when I first heard this album was how influenced these guys were by mid-to late 60s pop. We get just a taste of it before they blast open the gates with their crunchy guitar work and tightly interwoven rhythms. This one's a burner, and does a great job of pulling together those nervy, but danceable Gang of Four influences and injecting some BIG fuzzy garage production into the mix. "Tell Her Tonight" - Speaking of those 60s garage and pop influences, the harmonies and four-on-the-floor beat of the chorus is right out of 1966. I'm betting these guys were just as big fans of mid period Beatles and acts like Johnnie Kidd and the Pirates as they were those late 70s art-punk bands. This is catchy and fun and doesn't overstay its welcome. A pattern that the rest of the album is going to follow without much deviation. "Take Me Out" - This was the big hit and it's still very easy to see why. The whole thing is nothing but hooks, it's incredibly catchy, and has great sing-along verses AND choruses, is danceable, and has a very memorable and hummable core instrumental melody. It's like it was factory made to be a hit. And it was. So much so that in bizarrely ended up being heavily featured in massively selling mainstream football video games, and I think still has an afterlife in sports packages and highlight reels. It's had a pretty constant presence since it's release and still gets a ton of radio play. My kids even know it. Divorced of any of the other songs or the band's name, but still... "The Dark of the Matinée" - I think this was their other, much more minor, hit single at the time. It's got just as catchy, but has a much bouncier, chunky feel to it, and a bit more of a pleasing dynamic between the quieter and louder segments, and probably the best vocal performance, with a touch of humor. It's also a lot more dense, with some electronic touches, and some cool layered harmonies. The bass work on this album is consistently excellent, but deserves a special callout here. This one also puts a highlight on the general level of horniness present in this album ( and a lot of albums from these bands). It's nothing shocking or anything, but feels a bit like an overcorrection form the grunge hangover that seemed ( to me anyway) largely sexless, I guess maybe they were playing catchup to all the hip hop and dance pop stuff where it had reached almost camp levels of representation. "Auf Aches" - Some similar theming going on here in our first real outlier track that embraces some much more apparent electronic sounds. The dance club bass and disco drum beats abound once again, this time over a sweaty, angry bit of longing that nowadays could very well be read as an Incel anthem. It's never really deep enough to be that bothersome though, and the New Order-ish, downbeat dance club feel carries it very well. "Cheating on You" - The garage rock vibe is much stronger on this one, and get what feels like it could have been a genuine cover of some lost Nuggets-era track, with it's basic as hell verse and chorus. I could easily imagine the Troggs or the Pretty Things laying this down. Just take out all those extra notes and slow it down by 10-15% and it's pretty on point. "This Fire" - The band gets slow and croony, a tiny bit reminiscent of the Doors on the verses, but the rest of song hits those early 80s influences rather hard, with the jagged guitars and dance-punk rhythm. This is more of the same, but I'm very much still on board. "Darts of Pleasure" - By this point the band have settled into the high of a solid danceable groove that seems like you could almost take it for granted. There's a much more noticeable vocal filter going on here which adds a bit of flavor, and with the judicious use of some organ, and the German outro bit, it does still stand out. "Michael" - While lyrically pretty interesting, with the ( at the time) unique homoerotic themes, and solid energy, this one falls a bit flat for me as it lacks decent melody, and feels a bit like treading water, especially so near the end. Much more musically generic, than any of the previous tracks, it can't make up for it with all of the busyness, which it tries very damn hard to do. "Come on Home" - This one starts off with some Blondie "Heart of Glass"/ "Atomic" vibes before falling back on being a ( still very good) clone of "Take Me Out", though with a distinct chorus and a pretty damn good synth organ line. "40'" - Easily the funkiest track on here, with it's loose rubberbandy guitars that bring the Specials and English Beat to mind. This one is possibly my dark horse pick for favorite track this go round, and think that's partly because of how different it feels than so much else on the album. It reaches further into the poppier 80s post-punk sound to gather up little pieces of Orange Juice and the Stranglers as opposed to just hovering around Gang of Four and Joseph K. HIGHLIGHTS - "Jacqueline" - "Tell Her Tonight" - "Take Me Out" - "The Dark of the Matinée" - "Auf Aches" - "Cheating on You" - "This Fire" - "Darts of Pleasure" - "Come on Home" - "40'" MIDLIGHTS - "Michael" LOWLIGHTS - FINAL THOUGHTS As catchy and fun as this was to revisit, it's lost a step in the 22 years since it came out. No so much that I'd ever knock it very much, but it feels a lot less innovative and punchy given everything I've since went back and heard in the years since I first heard it. This felt electrifying and so very different than everything else around it that at the time I would have undoubtedly given it an easy 5-stars. Now it feels s little bit more of its time, and its originality has been worn away enough that its got a LOT more in common with the stuff around it than it felt like at the time. There's also a bit of hollowness I felt listening this time. I'm not sure it ever effecting me emotionally to begin with, but it's very apparent how hard the band is leaning into the aesthetic without ever really saying anything ( which is fine) or making me feel much of anything besides how catchy and energetic it all feels ( slightly less fine). I guess it's no surprise then that I never felt enough loyalty to the band, or many of their peers from this period to keep up with their career ( they released an album just last year!). And it doesn't really inspire me to want to go investigate further either. Respectable 4-ish star territory though, and for an act of and from this scene, they did it with a level of craft that was a head above. It's just not music for the ages I guess. They don't quite make it to the level of a band like Big Country, who for my money is much more undeserving of the one hit wonder status unceremonious bestowed on them by the likes of VH1. Besides, that distinction semes to have all but disappeared by the time Franz Ferdinand appeared on the scene, what with simultaneous releases, and licensing deals and such, so while both bands have great albums, the newer one was able to make more out of the resources they had. And yet, both are primarily known for their one big song still. It just didn't hurt Franz Ferdinand to fall out of favor because they didn't have nearly as far to go. And besides, there were plenty of video games and car commercials to lend their songs to keep the bills paid. I'm not sure if the really successful bands of today ever really get numbers approaching the ones of even the most throwaway one hit wonder bands of the 80s. They are certainly smarter about the amount of blood they ring out of those stones though. I've mentioned them a couple of times already in other reviews but if you want to see how this sort of vibe CAN and DOES mix well with some emotionally gripping and more naturalistic and vulnerable vibes - go check out Guitar Romantic by the Exploding Hearts, a criminally underrated band whose existence was tragically cut short, and who I think could have went on to make the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Stripes look second rate, had they gotten the chance. Possible turn-Offs might include: - unabashedly horny lyrics - disco flavored rhythms - very affected vocals - very simple 60s garage pop aesthetic mixed with very crowded dance punk guitar interplay You Might enjoy this if you: - crunchy but danceable rock - melody forward music - punchy and easily digestible poppy music that still has a bit of an edge - tight, catchy bangers PLAYLIST ALTERATIONS FURTHER LISTENING Precursors: - From Nowhere by the Troggs - Down By The Jetty by Dr. Feelgood - Marquee Moon by Television - Pink Flag by Wire - Entertainment! by Gang of Four - Eat to the Beat by Blondie - The Only Fun in Town by Josef K - Talking Heads: 77 by Talking Heads Contemporaries: - Guitar Romantic by The Exploding Hearts - Total Life Forever by Foals - Futureheads by the Futureheads - Silent Alarm by Bloc Party - Is This It by the Strokes - Veni Vidi Vicious by the Hives - Bang Bang Rock & Roll by Art Brut - Whip It On by the Raveonettes Descendants: - Django Django by Django Django - Tourist History by Two Door Cinema Club - What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? by The Vaccines - Get to Heaven by Everything Everything - This Modern Glitch by The Wombats - Bankrupt! by Phoenix - The Balcony by Catfish And The Bottlemen

I enjoyed most of the sound on this album…except the vocals. The strength of the 3/5 I’m giving it is for the stripped down rock sound. The second half of this album lapsed into a repetitiveness that faded from memory the moment the music stopped.