Franz Ferdinand
You Could Have It So Much Better

THE REVIEW

God bless Russian MP3 blogs that offer us the new Franz Ferdinand CD almost a month in advance.
A magnificent work that does not disappoint the expectations of those who had already appreciated their first work. The songs have grown, swelling from the first live versions played at various British summer festivals.

The album opens with "The Fallen", a very rock beginning that immediately shows what the four Scots are made of (Some say you're a trouble boy, just because you like to destroy).
Then there's the first single, "Do You Want To?", very danceable and filled with those decisive riffs that made them famous, but perhaps too similar to "Take Me Out".
Track 3 is "This Boy", much changed from the live version, with hammering guitars and a powerful chorus (This boy is so spectacular, the fourth piece is "Walk Away", according to who writes one of the most beautiful songs of the album, more different stylistically from the first LP, a ballad in the manner of Franz Ferdinand, romantically singing about a boy who wants his woman to go away, away to feel the pleasant sound of her leaving (I love the sound of you walking away).
Track number 5 is "Evil And A Heathen", the most exhilarating track on the album, made of chiaroscuro, electricity, and dark basses, already convincing in the first live performances.
We're at track number 6 and still no sign of cracks, "You're The Reason I'm Living" is perfect, poignant in the hilarity of how such a text is sung.
"Eleanor Put You Boots On" is magnificent, ideal for the soundtrack of a tear-jerking movie, it's a slap to the world, a tear, a wind of joy and the demonstration that musical genres never die: Franz Ferdinand succeed in amusing and making people cry like the Beatles did 30 years ago, with the same weapons. Who can say that's a crime?
Hilarity and nonchalance return in "Well That Was Easy" (a track not very convincing and engaging), "What You Meant" (to be played when everyone is drunk at a party to see if reflexes hold with this energizing music) and "I'm Your Villain" (dark and Arabesque) which could have been perfectly inserted stylistically in the first album.
The title track "You Could Have It So Much Better" starts as a garage-punk piece and expresses all its power in the hurricane chorus.
"Fade Together" is another Beatles-like appendix to the CD, piano and acoustic guitar, never trivial.
To close, "The Outsiders" that starts with knife-like guitars and virtually dance snare, which seems to come out of The Killers' hat, and to make a keyboard carpet with sounds borrowed from Oriental music.

A perfect album, the second masterpiece from this group that in 2 years everyone has tried to imitate. But even if these Franz Ferdinand are already the result of imitations and sounds and styles already heard, with this second work they reiterate one thing: they are inimitable.