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Dance Disc Isn't A Big Leap For Franz Ferdinand

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By CURTIS ROSS cross@tampatrib.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 5, 2009

Updated:

An album of songs about a tawdry night out doesn't suggest grand ambitions on Franz Ferdinand's part - what else have they ever written about, really? - but at least it's something they probably know well.

Fittingly, "Tonight" aims its musical arrows straight at the dance floor, which gives it a more solid focus than 2005's "You Could Have It So Much Better." And lord knows singer Alex Kapranos was born to play the lounge lizard.

He stretches for some David Byrne-style irony on "Live Alone," and appropriates Greg Dulli's self-loathing stud shtick for "No You Girls."

But "Tonight" doesn't rewrite the Franz Ferdinand script as much as early reports, which had the band auditioning dance producers, might have suggested. Its first two albums weren't particularly averse to dance rhythms, and the chorus of opening track "Ulysses" will be instantly recognizable to anyone who heard the band's introductory hit, "Take Me Out."

What "Tonight" does is give Franz Ferdinand a chance to get a deeper groove on while still staying rooted in the post-punk pop of its first two albums. That it succeeds is both a blessing and curse. It won't alienate fans of the previous records but it's hardly the daring move it could have been.

"Tonight" lives and dies by the hook. When the band goes for groove alone, as on the overextended "Lucid Dreams," things collapse into a bog of static beats and synth blurps that grate like claws on a blackboard.

Highlights include "Send Him Away," a Vise-Grip shuffle with chattering guitars, the brooding pop of "Twilight Omens" and the one-two punch of "Bite Hard" and "What She Came For," which seems to best realize the band's dance-floor intentions.

The final two tracks, "Dream Again" and "Katherine Kiss Me," may represent the evening's come-down and the morning after, but musically they feel tacked on after 40 minutes of beat-crazy action.

Download this: "Twilight Omens"

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