Much like their physical appearance on stage, Franz Ferdinand purveys button-down dance-rock, the kind where cutting loose involves untucking dress shirts with high thread counts and letting a few strands of product-laden hair break away from the rest. Instead, the band has given fans what they want and continued to follow their mission statement of keeping people dancing. Not only had the pump already been primed for intricate guitar and gooey bass throwdowns with !!!’s superlative release earlier this year, but in waiting four years between records, Franz Ferdinand could confidently strut their signature sound without the risk of oversaturation. While the four years between albums is a notably lengthy gap, the band made the right decision in keeping to what they do best instead of boldly going where no Franz had gone before.

Since the band’s inception, electronic elements have become infused with dance-rock to the point that more conventional guitar-bass-drum-keys bands within the genre have almost become quaint. Right Thoughts… doesn’t in any way break new ground for the band, but instead it reestablishes that their sleekly-honed and immensely popular guitar and bass driven sound has got more hooks than a tackle box.Īfter a middling sophomore effort and lackluster third album, Franz Ferdinand had dropped off the radar over the past four years. But the fact remains that, nearly a decade removed from their heralded debut, Franz Ferdinand is as dapper and brash and accessible as ever. Prefixes of art- and dance- can sometimes obscure the fact that this band is, after all, all pop and rock. Franz Ferdinand concludes their return to form, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, with the cheeky song “Goodbye Lovers and Friends,” where frontman Alex Kapranos lays out the funereal instructions, “ Don’t play pop music, no/ You know I hate pop music.” In many ways, it’s a perfectly sardonic line to wrap up an album that’s nearly as self-aware as the beyond-the-grave narrator of that final track.

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