Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand

"Some time around the end of 2001, Bob was sitting in Alex's kitchen. Alex had just been given a bass by his friend Mick, on the condition that he did 'something useful' with it. "Do you want to learn to play the bass then, Bob?" "No, I'm an artist, not a musician." "It's the same thing." "OK then." So Bob learned the bass and they planned a band. It had to be something big. Bob wanted it to be on the level of Field Marshall Haig's tears that fell as he counted the statistics of the men he had sent over the top. Alex wanted to make music that girls could dance ...

It’s become a shocking expectation amongst the people of Scotland that those of us into Indie Rock N Roll must love whatever Indie/Rock bands our country produces. This wouldn’t be so bad if, as a nation, we managed to muster up 1 decent band a generation. Diluting blind national pride with actual musical scrutiny when it comes to naming the last decent band from our lovely land can provide quite a headache. The View? Yawn, 1 of the 9,900 dull Libertines rip-offs clogging up your local HMV. The Fratellis? A joke that wasn’t funny the first time stretched out to a full blown album. Paolo Nutini? A crime against humanity. It’s enough to make Stuart Adamson spin in his ...

Well, wonders never cease. Me doing a proper mainstream music review! I have thus far written roughly 70 reviews on classical and film music of varying popularity during my time on the review sites, but never have I ventured into the realms of what more normal young people should be into. That is until I was challenged to do so by the eminent musicologist Monsieur Steerpyke of Wessex on the grounds that he would try to do a classical review himself. Well, after some consultation with my sister, here is my answer to the challenge – for better or for worse – about the debut album of the Glasgow-based band Franz Ferdinand, ingeniously titled ”Franz Ferdinand”. Now before I ...