
- Summary: The fifth full-length release for the Scottish indie rock band band was produced by Philippe Zdar of Cassius and is the first with Julian Corrie (who took over for Nick McCarthy).
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- Record Label: Domino
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
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Positive: 18 out of 27
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Mixed: 9 out of 27
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Negative: 0 out of 27
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Feb 1, 2018Always Ascending is a class act, polished, honed, several cuts above the mewling herd. New guitarist or not, Franz Ferdinand abide.
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Feb 8, 2018Always Ascending is, everywhere you look, a record driven by vim, vigour and ideas, and plenty of Kapranos’ idiosyncratic way with a lyric.
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Feb 9, 2018The Academy Award is a rather too languid ballad that seems to slow down the flow of the album, and closing track Slow Don’t Kill Me Now makes for a weirdly unremarkable and flat end to the record. Overall though, it’s a joy to hear the band sound inspired again, and it’s good to see that, after all these years, Franz Ferdinand are still a force to be reckoned with.
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Feb 6, 2018Always Ascending may only serve as an incremental progression for Franz Ferdinand, but in departing from their upbeat romps in favor of a more nuanced, philosophical approach, Kapranos and company have reinvigorated their music by reaching for higher ground.
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Feb 8, 2018The return of synths and disco-ish atmospherics serves, unsurprisingly, to obscure the fact that a nontrivial reinvention still eludes them. But to their credit, Franz Ferdinand are persistently resourceful, and in their theatrical suave and helter-skelter choruses there lingers an obvious knack for starting fires armed only with indie-pop panache.
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Feb 1, 2018So there’s verve, vigour, and more energy from the slightly revised line-up too, but it isn’t groundbreaking.
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Feb 20, 2018Like their past work, subpar filler holds the album back. It’s worth joining them for the climb, just know that it’s going to be an uneven ascent.
Score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 12
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Mixed: 5 out of 12
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Negative: 0 out of 12
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Feb 9, 2018
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Feb 13, 2018
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Feb 27, 2018
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Feb 18, 2018
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Feb 23, 2018
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Apr 4, 2018This is Franz weakest album to date. I get the aesthetic is cool but the 90's called and they want their eurobeat back.
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Feb 10, 2018
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