I recently read an interview with Beck discussing his new album and promoting the idea that he was always trying to do something different every time he released a record. His parting shot was along the lines of “[…] I was listening to the radio on the way to this interview when I heard the 500th band to sound like the Strokes – who wants that?”. Well in response to that rhetorical question I can only quote the well known Irish proverb – 'five million flies can’t be wrong’ – because if Beck wasn’t referring to the Franz Ferdinand’s eponymous album (winner of the Mercury Album of the Year award) then he should have been. Personally I found the Strokes album, Is This It? to be a very refreshing take on an old style – full of energy and youthful exuberance. But didn’t they release that album 4 years ago? I know there’s a time difference between New York and London – but I thought it was a few hours not a few years.
So if you had never heard of the Strokes and were keen to purchase a Mercury Prize winning album what would you find? Well the album starts off promisingly with a slow intro on Jacqueline before it starts to rock out in a pleasing fashion. There’s even a nice lyric about things being better on holiday – that’s why we only work when we need the money. Nice sentiments but I would question how much real creative work has gone into this album. Other tracks of interest on the album are Tell Her Tonight which has a large dollop of David Bowie glam to it and Come on Home which sounds like the lads had Radiohead’s The Bends on heavy rotation for a while.
However the six or seven middle tracks on the album are without question the best Strokes covers I have ever heard – except that they are Franz Ferdinand originals. Confused? – I know I was. The most alarmingly similarities occur on Take Me Out, which is a good song in itself, but I heard it 4 years ago and it’s not sufficiently different to enthuse my jaded ears. Later we get Auf Achse, which is average Strokes with a bit of Moby’s keyboards from PLAY mixed in there. (Incidentally, in the same way that one can tell that a political regime is officially tyrannical when they start designing their own uniforms for public occasions, I feel that once bands start putting up the German song titles things have gone just that little bit too far).
The original Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 and the First World War was attributed to his violent death. I respectfully suggest that his dying words may have been “Save your money – buy the Strokes instead”.