The Singles Jukebox

Wrong tactics, though.

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[4.27]Sally O’Rourke: Based on “Right Action,” Franz Ferdinand are right on schedule for the inevitable back-to-basics comeback LP (following the sophomore slump and the difficult third album). No surprise, though, that the post-punk revival’s greatest poptimists veer closer to ’60s bubblegum than crude garage rock, pairing synth horns, mild sitar effects and a touch of Farfisa with a Kasenetz-Katz-esque exclamatory refrain. This propulsive sunniness, however, is constantly undermined by spurts of anxiety (the pummeling drums on “how can we leave you?”) and wistfulness (“sometimes, wish you were here”). Each lapse is swiftly corrected, but with a little more ground lost each time around. This tension between the song’s determinedly upbeat attitude and the troubles lurking at the margins creates the impression of the song gritting its teeth and willing itself into cheerfulness, with “right thoughts! right words! right action!” as its therapeutic mantra.
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John Seroff: I’m willing to bet that even Franz Ferdinand fans had to check their iTunes library to see if this was a new track or just one they’d forgotten.  Solidly unremarkable, in all the ways you could read that.
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Katherine St Asaph: Duddhism.
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Patrick St. Michel: Nearly ten years ago, high-school me wandered into the Hot Topic in the Antelope Valley Mall and bought a Franz Ferdinand t-shirt. It was the second piece of band apparel I had ever purchased (first: a Hail To The Thief tee, which somehow lead to flirting with someone at a movie theater), but the most ill-fitting. The large size draped me like a hospital gown, but I still repped the Franz with pride, because “Take Me Out” absolutely rattled teenage-me’s mind. I grew and changed, though, and one day realized “this looks terrible on me, time to move on.” I haven’t thought about that shirt in a long time, but hearing “Right Action” and realizing Franz Ferdinand are still rehashing what they were doing in 2004, but without the “now-batting” announcement energy, brought back a lot of memories. Not going to be forging any new ones about this song, though.
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Tara Hillegeist: For a second there — buoyed, perhaps, by the band’s recent press releases — I thought Franz Ferdinand had gone all A Certain Ratio on us, but alas, ’twas not to be; more than a five-second sniff of such a distinctively cokey approach to stiffy post-punk wouldn’t be this band’s drug of choice at all. Check out the pubby throb to the bassline and “Right Action” gives the game away: this isn’t really a dancing song, and FF have never been a dancing band. It’s a drinking song, aimed at an audience old enough they’ve probably got need to have a few. Well favored for thirtysomething socioeconomically-depressed white footie fans, but it might actually have improved itself by being a bit more laddish. At least then you could’ve fooled yourself into thinking the beers were drinking anything but thoughts of how if only the government were really as tough on those lazy shiftless chavs as you wanted he’d just stop taking your jobs away. It all feels a bit like a British Toby Keith might have done. If this is how Franz Ferdinand want people to think of Alasdair Gray, Mr. Gray ought to sue them for slander.
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Alfred Soto: The fancy boys do their sailor chant thing, and when the proceedings drag the dee-dee-dees and horn charts do their best. If this is a first single, we’ll need better than an enervated take on Wham!’s “Wham Rap.”
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Edward Okulicz: I’m digging the jerky jangle but the song feels underwritten or unfinished, perhaps both. Or perhaps neither, and it just reminds me too much of “Do You Want To” only with a little less zip.
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Scott Mildenhall: Alex Kapranos sort of wants you back, maybe – he’s not completely certain really. It’s the kind of ambiguous insouciance that goes some way to making this sound exactly like what people are supposed to have always had these Paddy McGuinness facilitators penned down as sounding like, and that’s no bad thing; nor is the slightly less predictable recalling of “Rhythm Nation.”
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Madeleine Lee: At his sharpest, Alex Kapranos makes a fair match for a distracted David Byrne. From there, the odds go significantly downhill.
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Anthony Easton: Now that they have co-opted the Eightfold Path into a pretty amazing rock song, everytime someone googles the slogan, they get the the band and not the religion. This isn’t the first time they have done this. In this day and age it is useful to note that inherited slogans and inherited sounds (still sounding a bit too much like the Clash, boys) can be attached together, and that attachment is a kind of concern that the Buddha warned us about.
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Brad Shoup: Forever and ever, Franz Ferdinand will pitch their melodic lines on the most obnoxious ground. None of their hits has been fun to sing; you’ll derive more satisfaction from aping the overloaded-mic sounds they left in. I know that “post” is derived from the Latin word meaning “incompetent at,” but they’ve had years to work on their fascist-pop schtick. So why am I hearing the same bland guitar tone, and why is Paul Thomson still doing all the heavy lifting?
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