What is it about the lowly guitar that inspires such stubborn, partisan passion in so many music fans? A hundred brilliant pop records can be released but if they haven't been rubbed vigorously against a Stratocaster the purists are stricken by a temporary but total deafness. Conversely, if a guitar band comes along with even the scantest songwriting ability and a mere sprinkling of style, they are lauded as the band who will save music from itself.
Fortunately, unlike the remarkably over-rated Strokes, Franz Ferdinand have more than just a little bit of style and songwriting suss about them. So if this record isn't the heart-stopping, epoch defining masterpiece that some are claiming, it's still one of the more confident and intriguing guitar debuts to have emerged since the collapse of Britpop.
Opener 'Jacqueline' sums up everything good about Franz Ferdinand, beginning with a tender sketch of passionate glances across a sterile office, before its mutation into a joyous, snappy celebration of working class culture over which Alex Kapranos yelps about it being 'better on holiday'. Sadly, the energy it generates is quickly dissipated by 'Tell Her Tonight', which is slender and inconsequential.
The same can't be said of the extraordinary 'Take Me Out', not only the album's masterpiece but the most arresting guitar based single to trouble the charts in recent history. Its Strokes-like intro proves just how easy it is to (under)achieve that subdued, mumbling sound, while its sudden lurch into an angular, irresistible stomp - all snare and staccato rhythms - proves their ambitions are not only loftier but a lot more fun.
From this point 'Franz Ferdinand' flits between moments of extravagant brilliance and more humdrum, unambitious indie fare. 'Matinee' is another near classic with a sizzling guitar riff and an undertow of sexual longing and nostalgia, while 'Auf Achse' is tautly dramatic and haunting. 'This Fire', on the other hand, is a new wave screechalong of the kind that so heavily overpopulated the Hot Hot Heat album.
The two oddest things here are 'Come On Home' and 'Michael'. The former is a precise slow-burner dedicated to the perverse joys of sulking, while the latter is whippet thin and wiry, a bruising ode to gay lust that manages to avoid sounding voyeuristic thanks to the joyous line 'beautiful boys on a beautiful dancefloor'. On these songs, Franz sound something like the band their admirers would like them to be.
In the end, 'Franz Ferdinand' isn't quite the revenge of the white indie boy that so many critics would wish it to be. It won't usher in a bold new era where boys are boys and bands play guitars, but there is more than enough here to chew over and enjoy. Blur and The Smiths started their careers with disappointing debuts, but went on to live up to the hype invested in them. Franz Ferdinand might just do the same.
