::Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand::

As soon as I saw Franz Ferdinand’s press kit, I knew I would hate them.

I mean, look at these nerds, dressed up like Interpol without ties, trying to be all cool and hip.

These guys haven’t got a chance in hell.

But my job is to review music, not wardrobe and image.

I put the record on and immediately, I thought, “You’ve got be kidding me with this post-punk crap. That garbage was sooo 2002.”

Of course I wasn’t really listening. I was still thinking about how much I hated that one dude’s moustache. It wasn’t ironic or good-looking. What was he thinking?

Music, not wardrobe.

Focus, okay?

All right.

I let a few days pass and eventually I sat down with the record, attempting to divorce myself from my preconceptions.

And, hell, I was wrong.

I heard one of the best records I’ve heard in a long while.

The thing about Franz Ferdinand is that they’re not really that new.

Rather, they tend to be a synthesis of everything that draws one into an addiction with rock music.

They keep their head in the future and their feet in the past.

Franz Ferdinand’s all-encompassing knowledge of worthy music is impressive, but their tightness is even more astounding. Every song is so securely wound that it feels like it could unravel at any moment and leave the listener with an incredible sense of urgency.

While each member plays perfectly in time with one another, they, at the same time, aren’t afraid of going in four different directions, which they almost always do.

Franz Ferdinand’s urgency can’t be simply measured by how fragile they sound. One needs to, of course, mention those damn disco beats.

It sounds like they’re playing at Studio 54 where someone lit them on fire and told them the only way they could put it out was by playing with a greater sense of urgency and by making everyone dance faster and weirder.

Not only would Franz Ferdinand make a great Studio 54 house band, but they’d probably fit in there as well.

All over their record they make an effort to sound creepily androgynous like early Bowie or Suede, especially on “Michael.” Singer Alex Kapranos blurs sexual lines allowing everyone except the homophobes to come along.

While Franz Ferdinand do sound kind of disco, they more frequently tend to stick to the rock end of the spectrum.

They find a comfortable niche in between Interpol and Hot Hot Heat (see “Take Me Out,” “Cheating On You,” or “This Fire”) but thankfully sound nothing like either.

Other times, like on “Tell Her Tonight,” they sound like Wire or even the Pixies.

In the end though, Franz Ferdinand doesn’t sound like a conglomeration of these torchbearers but a completely new band - and a fantastic one at that.

So I learned a valuable lesson. Don’t judge a book by its cover, or its press kit, because you might lose out on the content.

Unless that book looks like Good Charlotte. In which case you should discard of it immediately because there is nothing redeemable to be found in those pages.