Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

While it would have been interesting to hear a further evolution of the band's sound, the album offers plenty of adrenaline, pheromones and stealthy sophistication, thanks to Bob Hardy's driving bass, Alex Kapranos' expressive crooning and the band's unusual ability to make every song sound like a single.

As usual, Franz Ferdinand pack a greatest-hits album’s worth of melodic tricks into each tune, while Kapranos purrs the sort of pick-up lines that would earn a lesser man a gimlet in the face.

While hardly the evolutionary leap forward that the band had suggested was afoot, Tonight is still, inarguably, fine for now.

What Franz Ferdinand have proven is that not only do they make impressive albums but that they are capable of trying out new sounds with great skill. It’s still the same band we fell in love with, only they have incorporated more sounds into their arsenal and with songs as good as these, it’s a welcome addition.

Tonight is a resounding success, and the first essential pop record of 2009.

The mix of Alex Kapranos' louche croon with the band's disciplined racket is still a knockout, and they've switched things up enough to keep it interesting.

The lurching rhythms, slick hooks and stomping choruses are still everywhere you turn, but the Fraz lads have branched out, with seemingly mixed results. [Holiday 2008, p.90]

A subtler, smarter album with a considerable capacity to get you moving.

Four middle-aged men discover a dance element to their music... and it’s good!

While Tonight: Franz Ferdinand might not take all the chances those early reports suggested, it shows the band examing their world from all angles, from the unflattering profile in the mirror behind the batr to the long hard look into the soul. Life in three dimensions suits them very well indeed. [Feb 2009, p.102]

Tonight... isn't a bad album by any means, and it's certainly an improvement on their last effort, but at the same time you can't shake the feeling that they missed a trick.

This might not be the ‘music of the night’ that rotund talent show type Lloyd Webber and his phantoms had in mind, but based on the majority of this album Messrs Kapranos, Hardy, McCarthy and Thomson can definitely take us out tonight.

Does Tonight satisfy what we were all hoping for after three years between albums, along with the lofty expectations that are by definition bound to accompany a concept album/rock opera? Probably not. But, is it better than "You Could Have It So Much Better?" Definitely, if not only for the points on the record where Kapranos and company get it oh so right.

More so than stoking the band's current commercial prospects, Tonight is an exciting record for what it could potentially spell for Franz Ferdinand's future.

All in all, the band just isn’t as melodically inclined this time around, and it’s a damn shame, too, because by and large, this still remains the band’s most adventurous outing to date--just not their most memorable.

Franz Ferdinand mainly stick to their small, intensely flavorful basics, packing songs with tempo changes and propulsive guitar riffs.

While not all of those risks pay off, what works about Tonight speaks to the band's greater maturity and vision.

Even at just 42 minutes, Tonight is relentless, yet the comedown is exquisite.

It will be bettered, as surely as night follows day, but there might not be another album released in the next 12 months that offers the same delirious, sugar-coated enjoyment, let alone one that matches it with Kapranos' casually whip-smart lyrics.

As usual, their guitar interplay is well-lubricated and dirty when appropriate, but in spite of the reheated disco tropes and skronky electronics, much of Tonight feels like it's been forged with the same stale, trademarked chorus in hand.

Here the band, with producer Dan Carey (Hot Chip, CSS) at their side, dip their big toe into electro-pop, Afrobeat (sorta), new-wave seizures, and all manner of groove that bespeak body-rockin' pleasures.