vocal hook kicks in, it sounds like a gang of droogs busting up a 1965 Beach Boys session.
Franz Ferdinand easily won the Kings of the New Wave Revival sweepstakes -- trumping British peers like Bloc Party and the Futureheads -- with the Sta-Prest jump and firecracker choruses of their 2004 debut, Franz Ferdinand. But the tight lightning on You Could Have It So Much Better shows deeper roots in the first wave of white electric dance music: specifically the crunchy-guitar R&B and arch-garage songwriting of 1965-67 Kinks. The creeping intro of guitar and kick drum in "Evil and a Heathen" snaps me back to "Milk Cow Blues" on The Kink Kontroversy, and the way Kapranos and McCarthy fire up "The Fallen" and "You're the Reason I'm Leaving" with pitted grinding riffs instead of power chords is right out of the "You Really Got Me" composer's manual. On top of that, Kapranos often sings in a sighing tenor that suggests a less precious Ray Davies with a hipster-ennui dash of the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, especially next to the parlor-piano rolls in "Eleanor Put Your Boots On." Either by accident or conscious homage, Franz Ferdinand have made an album that, in more places and ways than you'd expect, is closer to Face to Face than to Gang of Four's Entertainment!
There is nothing antique about the results. "This Boy" is a song about the vengeance of bling -- "I see losers losing everywhere/If I lose, it'll only be the damn I give for another" -- built with lethal concision: 2:18 of dirty-surf guitars atop an impatient disco throb. "Evil and a Heathen" is over in even less time but suitable for endless replay and pogo-ing, with its pulse and crusted twang soaked in psychedelic phasing, like the White Stripes at play in the Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park." One of the best songs here actually has nothing to do with distortion or dancing. In "Walk Away," Kapranos shows off the hurt he's turned into triumph ("Yes, I'm cold/But not as cold as you are/I love the sound of you walking away") with an irresistible overcast-glam blend of acoustic guitar and circus organ.
The problem with You Could Have It So Much Better is, as with so many second albums, consistency. Franz Ferdinand never run out of knockout lick
For their blasphemously good sophomore album, the Scottish art/disco-poppers refrain from singing about the horrors of fame and the constant stream of women (or lack thereof), and continue exploring the possibilities within the pop format. All throughout, shambling art-school posturing gives way to dancefloor fillers.
