Franz Ferdinand

Paul Thompson was originally in Pro Forma, a Scottish trio that released a four-song EP in 2002, reissued with other rarities as Pro Forma (Tsk Tsk, 2004). Human Error and Sexual Design offered electronic dance music with a punk edge, reminiscent of New Order and Suicide, that would have sounded amateurish even 20 years earlier. Thompson went on to form Franz Ferdinand.

And Franz Ferdinand resurrected Scottish pop by harking back to the new wave, i.e. by adopting and re-contextualizing in Scotland the fad that was overflowing from New York: the revival of the new wave. The singles Darts Of Pleasure and especially Take Me Out were catchy and bouncy enough to justify the title of "next big thing" of Scot-pop. The album Franz Ferdinand (Domino, 2004) references XTC and the Talking Heads without sounding too derivative. Alex Kapranos' melodramatic crooning, Paul Thomson's cybernetic drumming and Bob Hardy's obsessive bass formed a positive-feedback loop. If This Fire tries too hard to manufacture an arena-pop refrain, standout The Dark of the Matinee is even catchier than Take me Out. The punk-ish Cheating on you is counterbalanced by Auf Achse, that flirts with Blondie-esque disco-music. There are odd hybrids Tell Her Tonight sounds like a funky version of the Mamas & the Papas. The odd tempo of the rhythm section shines in Darts of Pleasure, another highlight, a cross of disco-music, punk-rock and the Doors. The main drawback of the album is that by the end the songs sound repetitive.

The carefree, exuberant spirit that underlies most of the songs on You Could Have It So Much Better (Sony, 2005) somehow evokes 1980s glam-rock, especially the musichall bombast of The Fallen and Evil and a Heathen (an explosive and swinging mix of The Fall and the Dead Kennedys), but also Do You Want To, which sounds like David Bowie fronting a dance version of a Rolling Stones song. One of the best melodies shows up in the energetic ska-punk of This Boy, somewhere between the Dance Hall Crashers and Romeo Void. The album gets less and less interesting as one wades through the languid Beatles-ian ballad Eleanor Put Your Boots Back On, the trivial punk-pop rigmarole You Could Have It So Much Better and the funky-disco banger Outsiders. They sounded like a single-oriented message-less band that a carefully-orchestrated hype turned into an album-oriented phenomenon.

The self-referential concept album Tonight (Epic, 2009) is their most ambitious yet but also the least catchy, boldest being the eight-minute Lucid Dreams. None of the disco ditties (that generally emphasize the "disco" element over the "rock" element) has the marketing power of past singles, the closest being Ulysses, Send Him Away, Turn It On and No You Girls Never Know.

Blood, (Epic, 2009) is a dub remix version of Tonight.