Music
Franz Ferdinand show how to handle a line-up change by taking the chance to let their sound evolve
Album reviews, plus Jim Gilchrist on Eddie Mcguire
POP Franz Ferdinand: Always Ascending
Domino
JJJJ
Kyle Craft: Full Circle Nightmare
Sub Pop
JJJJ
Bas Jan: Yes I Jan
Lost Map
JJJ
Lylo: Post Era
El Rancho Records
CJJJJ heck ignition: phase two of Franz Ferdinand successfully launched. They’ve lost one founder member – guitarist Nick Mccarthy – along the way but gained two hip young gunslingers in multiinstrumentalist Julian Corrie, aka synth pop solo artist Miaoux Miaoux, and guitarist Dino Bardot, erstwhile of glam indie trio 1990s. There was also some fun during the transition period when they teamed up with veteran art pop wags Sparks to form the joyous FFS, before carrying forward that quirky erudition to the fifth Franz album, Always Ascending.
Bardot joined after the recording but you can hear the difference Corrie has made almost instantly as his keyboards lead the countdown into the indie disco pulse of the title track and his soaring backing vocals complement its upwardly mobile trajectory. Meanwhile, Parisian dance producer Philippe Zdar captures the more electronica-leaning direction of the music without stripping the band of their buoyant personality.
As one would expect from Franz, there are infectious grooves and bold hooks galore, from the repetitive refrain of Lazy Boy to the blue eyed soul-tinged Paper Cages but also a subtle ambivalence, something naggingly double-edged about the joy of connection expressed in Finally and a darker, party’s-over hue to the music behind their assertion that “the Academy Award for good times goes to you”.
They reserve the album’s biggest chorus for its most unequivocal message: “we’re going to America, we’re going to tell them about the NHS” they swagger on Huck & Jim, bolstered by the teasing tempo changes they have employed so assuredly since debut hit Take
Me Out. It’s the potential feelgood festival hit of the summer, poised to seamlessly take its place beside other Franz anthems. A band with this strength of character makes change look easy.
Like Franz Ferdinand, Portlandbased indie troubadour Kyle Craft has personality in abundance. Imagine an extrovert, testifying Bob Dylan with country rock’n’roll twang who is also versed in the glam garage pop spontaneity of Ezra Furman. On
Full Circle Nightmare, Kraft benefits greatly from recording with a live band for the first time, capturing an energy and audacity missing from so many of his timid songwriting peers, but the quality extends to his rare gentler moments such as acid country ballad The Rager, which is swathed in Nashville strings.
London-based harpist Serafina Steer has taken a left turn for her latest project by forming her first band, Bas Jan. The line-up has changed since the recording of debut album, Yesijan , but there’s a strong identity already in place, influenced by the femme punk spikiness of bands such as The Slits and The Raincoats. Steer’s blank vocals are more rhythmic than melodic, as she improvises songs around the “fountain of mundanity” that is her everyday life – folk drones about getting paid, legal disputes, disappointing visits to archeological sites, the usual. It’s hypnotic stuff, whether the fidgety No Sign, on which Steer ponders what has happened to her elusive flatmate, or the calm meditation of Walton on the Naze, reflecting the echoing quietness of a seaside town they forgot to shut down.
There is further strong stylisation from Lylo, a genre-straddling fivepiece from Glasgow blending jazz, soul, prog and electronica influences on their sophisticated second album
Post Era to create a dreamy, sultry sound generously embellished with Iain Mccall’s lithe saxophone woven through the songs. Like their peers Pronto Mama, their freewheeling attitude to blurring boundaries has timeless appeal and refreshing originality.
Huck & Jim is the potential feelgood festival hit of the summer, poised to take its place beside other Franz anthems