Franz Ferdinand - The Human Fear - Review by Eoin Glackin
2.5/5
Franz Ferdinand playing Oxegen, around the time of monster-hit Take Me Out, stands out as one of my great early festival memories, and I will always have a soft spot for them after that magic gig.
Although generally labelled as art-rock, whatever that means, the band emerged in the early to mid-00s riding the wave of the garage rock revival, that itself fell out of the back pocket of Britpop as it drunkenly climbed into the back of its Rolls Royce.
They always seemed the more mature band of their era, confident and interesting without any rockstar posturing. And today, I don’t come to Franz Ferdinand for edge, I come for punchy, hooky guitar riffs wrapped around interesting rhythms and structures and generally, a sense of fun.
From the get-go with “Audacious” and “Everydaydreamer,” I was getting just what I came for.
And then came “Hooked.”
Each song on the album is said to be about some “deep-set human fears and how overcoming and accepting these fears drives and defines our lives.” This adds up, given the album’s fourth song has added an entirely new fear into my life.
“Hooked” is so bizarrely annoying that I found myself imagining lying on my death bed, hopefully many centuries from now, and the last thing that pops into my mind is this song and there’s nothing I can do to stop it, and then… lights out. That’s the last thing I ever experience.
That’s a genuine “human fear” I must now live with. That’s how much I hated that song.
The latter half of the record, on my first listen at least, was sullied by “Hooked,” in that everything was laced with the sour taste of knowing it was drawn from the same well.
But that was unfair to some of these songs, as there are some moments of genuine brilliance among them. “Tell Me I Should Stay,” for one, as it morphs from a roomy, melancholic piano piece into a swirling, panicked, driving rocker.
“Cats” is, musically, equally impressive but the main lyric about not being able to turn a cat into a dog comes off a bit Alan Partridge.
“Black Eyelashes” has a quirky, sea-shanty quality that, honestly, may have been more appealing if my “ridiculous-sensor” hadn’t been turned up to such high-alert after “Hooked.”
On closer, “The Birds,” Alex Kapranos ends the whole affair with the lyric “thank you for accepting me despite what I have done. Thank you for accepting me, the man that I’ve become.”
I’ll have to get back to you on that one, Alex. I’m not sure I’m there yet.
