Always Ascending

Always Ascending is every bit as smart and dynamic as their acclaimed debut, but familiarity has dampened its dramatic impact.

The only reason Always Ascending does not rate a perfect 10 is because of a couple of David's amongst the Goliaths. Two slower, more contemplative tracks that don't work as well, but don't qualify as clunkers either.

Always Ascending is, everywhere you look, a record driven by vim, vigour and ideas, and plenty of Kapranos’ idiosyncratic way with a lyric.

With Always Ascending’s sharp menace and mad genius, Franz have rescaled the mountain and made it back to the top.

The alert and taut Always Ascending restores theband's original pop kinesis and then some. It is by far and away their most interesting offering since that debut album. [Mar 2018, p.92]

Always Ascending is a class act, polished, honed, several cuts above the mewling herd. New guitarist or not, Franz Ferdinand abide.

The sound of a band renewed, Always Ascending fizzes with the energy of a first album and lets Franz Ferdinand start all over again. [Mar 2018, p.106]

Despite such surface gloss, it’s clear Franz Ferdinand are still finding their creative footing without McCarthy. The taut arrangements present on previous albums can occasionally give way to moody repetition (“The Academy Award”) or sluggish tempos (“Slow Don’t Kill Me Slow”), robbing the record of immediacy. This is a small quibble, however.

Despite some missteps, Always Ascending features enough excellent dance tracks, experimentation, and optimism to keep Franz Ferdinand fun and relevant a decade and a half into their career.

It is by no means perfect, and at points misjudged, but for the first time since the early 2000s we have a record that runs the gamut of what makes Franz Ferdinand great: it is an album full of character, craft and flair all at once.

It's a return to form the band never really lost, and if the quiet bits drag, the wit's sharper than ever.

Not everything lands with the same emphasis as the album's opening moments, but there are enough quality moments across ten tracks--how "Lois Lane" frames the horrors of the "over 30 singles night" at its chorus, the disco drive of "Glimpse of Love," the mid-song sax run of "Feel the Love Go"--to suggest this transformation in sound has yet to reach its peak.

Always 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.

So while Always Ascending is certainly a return to form in places, it certainly isn't perfect, particularly in its middle run. ... Overall, it's a pleasant feeling to have a good Franz Ferdinand record again, like a warm hug reminding one of a simpler time only slightly bastardised by ten years of regressive politics and is seemingly inspiring many of these bands to redress the balance.

The result is quiet success. [Mar 2018, p.25]

The 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.

Always Ascending has its moments, even if it’s not the musical rebirth Franz Ferdinand sought.

It's frustrating, because behind the superficial surfaces, these songs can thrill. [No. 150, p.52]

Like 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.

With its mix of intriguing sounds and occasionally underwhelming songwriting, Always Ascending feels more like a first effort than the band's actual debut did. As it stands, it's a somewhat shaky but promising start for the revamped Franz Ferdinand.

This evergreen Glasgow outfit have only tweaked their sound rather than rebooting it decisively, though, making their fifth album a restatement of their core art school pop principles.

None of this feels enough to truly deserve that futuristic tag, but maybe this new set-up just needs time to find their own MO? In the meantime, we’ve got another great single to add to that hypothetical greatest hits.

While the record climaxes with a duo of stomping disco tracks furnished with pleasingly dour melodies. They hammer home Always Ascending’s technical brilliance, but a visceral emotional connection remains elusive.

Though sharp and sly, too often here there’s a shortfall of melodic potency, and an over-reliance on structures that are methodical rather than marvellous, torpedoed by their own cleverness.

Always Ascending thrives when the band indulge their sense of fun--it's not the best work Franz Ferdinand have ever produced, but it's proof that they should embrace their intelligence and their quirks more and not try to be a standard indie band. They’re too good for that.