Now here’s something about the music industry that really
gets on my nerves: when pop acts don't like to be called pop acts.
Oh sure, you get the acts that don’t care one way or
another, but there are a number of acts – particularly in rock and R&B –
who will always attempt to qualify their genre as anything besides pop music. And really, it’s not surprising why – many
people tend to denigrate pop music simply because of their preconceptions
regarding its genre, believing that it’s ephemeral, inconsequential, and
stupid. Worse still, being branded a pop act is still used by some critics as a
verbal shorthand to dismiss some acts out of hand without bothering to delve
deeper into their ambitions or context.
And to me, this just seems goddamn wrong. Pop is a genre, not a qualifier, and it shouldn’t be used to
denigrate an act one way or another, mostly because some of the best and most
celebrated acts of all time have spent portions of their lifespans in the ‘pop’
consciousness. Just because said music might have a conventional structure or
an accessible sound does not mean it can or should be castigated by critics who
are constantly hunting for the newest eccentricity in the indie scene. In fact,
I’d make the argument (again) that writing good
pop music, the material that’s actually well-written and catchy and has staying
power while remaining mainstream-accessible, is actually much more difficult
than random independent experimentation, because you’re working within a
framework that actively resists attempts to change or push boundaries. It’s
also one reason I tend to like Lady Gaga’s writing methodology even if I don’t
always like her music: she’s trying to make things weirder and more baroque,
but she has the streak of populism to stay within the current pop
consciousness.
So when I make the statement that Franz Ferdinand is an
indie pop rock act, I don’t say it in order to blast the band. In fact, I’d
make the argument that their pop-centric songwriting is one of the best
features of their music and one of the factors that makes them the
critically-acclaimed indie acts of the past decade, not to mention one of my
favourites. This is a band that has a strong pop sensibility, particularly in
the construction of their hooks, and they have the impeccable songwriting and
energetic delivery that gives them a real presence in the pop landscape. Or, to
put it as acclaimed critic Nathan Rabin described them:
Listeners might get older, but pop music always stays the same age. It’s never quite old enough to drink, legally that is. (But it still knows how to party!) The inclusion of Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out”... consequently feels like the birthday girl’s super-cool brother, who wears skinny jeans, does lot of coke, and spends several hours each morning trying to make his hairstyle look casual, crashing the party along with a smattering of his equally hip friends. It’s a terrific slice of 1979 New York (by way of Scotland)...
Pretty much, and indeed, if I was looking for an attitude to
best describe Franz Ferdinand – that of a pop band with decidedly mature
sensibilities and smarter songwriting – it would be that. So when the band
exploded in 2004 (otherwise known as the first attempt for indie rock to break
into the mainstream), it wasn’t really surprising that they were lumped with The
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Killers, Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire, and others. Unlike
most of the rest of these bands, Franz Ferdinand had a follow-up album waiting,
and the second punch in 2005 with You
Could Have It So Much Better was rougher, faster, and arguably even
better. Like The Strokes on their first two albums, Franz Ferdinand had a
unique sound (indie rock fused with a retro funk/disco blend that did ‘dance
music with guitars’ far better than E.M.F. could have ever hoped for), hooks
that were catchy as hell, and a lead vocalist with a lot of personality.
Unlike The Strokes, however, Franz Ferdinand were decent
lyricists, and that led to their longevity persisting onto their third album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand in 2009, which
many have deemed their weakest, yet still very strong in its own right. The
songwriting was as strong as always, but to me the weaknesses were in the fact
that the great hooks just weren’t there in the same way like they were back in
2004 or 2005. Sure, there was ‘Ulysses’ and ‘No You Girls’, but it started to
feel like some of that spark was starting to fizzle. Worse still was the fact I
got the feeling the band knew that spark was fading too, which led to their
experimentation with electronic elements with mixed results.
So with all of that in mind, the band took another four
years off and finally have come back with a new album this year. Has the time
off been enough for the band to reclaim their spark?
...so I don't really cover a lot of pop punk and pop rock. And hey, that happens - even this early in the year my schedule is filling up - but it also means that outside of the acts that crossed over and made a significant impact in the mainstream, I haven't really kept up with the scene, especially if they broke trying to capitalize on the trend in the mid-2000s and never really caught on. One thing I do know is that it tended to be a more American scene, rooted in disaffected pockets across suburbia or just from California as a whole, and while Canada has a scene that somehow has remained somewhat relevant to this day, if you cross over the U.K... well, beyond an act like Neck Deep that managed to break a few years ago, there's very few with consistent name recognition.
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