Contrary to popular belief, a near perfect debut is nowhere near as hard to follow as a scattered and sluggish third album. Especially if the “more of the same + calculated risks” sophomore bow comes in between. Though Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight was a fine record, it was a largely hitless one, rounding off a common career arc from which few, if any, bands make a meaningful artistic recovery. Just ask yourself whether Interpol, the Strokes, Bloc Party, Maximo Park, or the Killers made the best fourth album. The festival circuit still beckons, so you either blow things up or just keep trudging forward, but on Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, Franz Ferdinand do a little bit of both and not enough of either.
After a four year hiatus, the mere act of sounding like Franz Ferdinand can feel like a “comeback” in both a literal and figurative sense. Perhaps for that very reason, the first half wisely tries to provide a contact buzz by establishing a subtle, but unmistakable proximity to Franz Ferdinand’s better-known material. The opening title track repeats its name enough times where it becomes a hook in spite of its clunky rhythm and dull, anhedonic sentiment; better is the one-bar drum fill bearing the same EQ'ing as the 16th-note snare rip from “Take Me Out.” It's damn near a sampled breakbeat. The chorus of “Evil Eye” slinks and skulks enough to recall a time when Franz Ferdinand sounded sleazier and more dancefloor-oriented than your average rock band, but it has to fight through a verse filled with bothersome vocal filters (an indulgent byproduct of their self-production) to do so.
There is something pleasant and quaint about hearing Franz Ferdinand reestablish themselves as a workmanlike, crowd-pleasing dance-rock band by going heavy on the midtempo disco thump; mind you, they arose at a time when “dance-rock” still meant guitar bands and went heavier on the right side of the hyphenate. And bringing in Bjorn Yttling and Todd Terje to help out on production and slightly nudge them out of that stasis has to constitute right thoughts and right actions, right? Yet, the biggest letdown here is how often Kapranos fails to find the right words.
Franz Ferdinand initially stood out amongst the glut of post-Strokes pretty boys for their wit and playful sexuality, qualities which aren’t tied to a particular sound and tend to age well. Similar to Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner, you’d figure Kapranos would make for a good balladeer-- as far back as Franz Ferdinand, he already sounded like an older man playing a young man’s game, wearied and louche. But Franz Ferdinand have yet to prove a knack for balladry. The baroque pop flourishes of “Fresh Strawberries” and “The Universe Expands”’s bleeping electro show how crucial momentum and groove are to Franz Ferdinand’s musicianship by their lack thereof; though four minutes apiece, they feel twice as long. The prevalence of insistence over finesse is confirmed by lead single “Love Illumination”, which doesn’t grow on you as much as twist your arm into submission; a Los Angeles nightmare of overeager-to-please Fitz & the Tantrums soul-pop and Edward Sharpe's clap-trap uplift (“sweet love illumination/ sweet, sweet love elevation”), I doubt it would be improved in the slightest if Franz Ferdinand were being sarcastic about the whole affair.
They’re probably not-- if you’re trying to draw blood, sarcasm’s a pretty dull blade and Franz Ferdinand aren't in attack mode either musically or thematically. Still, just about anything's sharper than the diffident lyrics that Kapranos brings to Right Thoughts. If you’re still holding him to the standards set by the clever repartee in “Dark of the Matinee” and “Michael”, you’ll drive yourself mad trying to force additional layers of meaning into the central metaphor of “Fresh Strawberries”-- “We will soon be rotten/ We will all be forgotten.” Same goes for “Bullet”, which sanitizes and lobotomizes the sex-as-target practice construct of “Take Me Out” (“Never get your bullet out of my head/ Never get your bullet out of my mind”) and “Treason! Animals”, which exists for the sole purpose of its titular pun, which is really not worth living for.
But I suppose half-assed is preferable to when Kapranos puts his whole backside and thensome into “Goodbye Lovers and Friends”. Already saddled with the stale meta-textual effect of using a presumptive breakup song as an album closer, an additional coat of unfortunate irony is laid on by the self-reference that suggests it’s Franz Ferdinand’s breakup song. “You know I hate pop music,” Kapranos sings and like a lot of Right Thoughts, he sorta kinda means it, but not really. On the other hand, the last words on Right Thoughts are "When they lie and say this is not the end/ You can laugh as if we’re still together/ But this really is the end" and their sincerity is a moot point. You're just meant to applaud an obvious punchline.
Still, while Right Words achieves a baseline level of quality or at least competency with the exception of “Goodbye Friends and Lovers” and "Love Illumination", they lack the conviction to take most of their lesser ideas to the realm of being unpleasant rather than kinda boring. Maybe that's a positive; if anything on Right Words came up on satellite radio, you probably wouldn’t turn it off. But by the same token, you also wouldn’t hesitate to use them as a bathroom break in a live setting, lest you miss “Take Me Out” or "Do You Want To?" At the very least, while the letdown of Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action isn’t all that surprising, the reasons for it are. It’s got nothing to do with the currency of a template the band all but perfected over a decade ago-- if anything, Franz Ferdinand sounds even fresher in 2013, since it's not like they have to duke it out with the Rakes, the Fratellis, and the Kaiser Chiefs or their modern day equivalents. Yet you can’t help but feel like the title isn’t a tribute to resolve or a refreshed sense of purpose, but rather a more erudite way of telling us they’re going through the motions.
