Well, I adore this album constantly, not just today.
The radio hits may be too catchy and repetitive for some, but a lot of the less-famous album songs are absolutely perfect and so damn clever.
Regarding the music:
The actual music is danceable, calculatedly aggressive, arrogant and fashionable. I like it. I can say without exaggeration that the music is everything I want in a "time to stay awake" album. The rhythm and instrumentation (to all but the two slow songs) is like a three-shots-of-espresso caffeine rush during an all-night marathon, just as I finally have the idea needed to finish a huge research paper at 4am. Also, it is easy to dance to. I like dancing. Research papers and dancing. What else am I? I'm content with this.
Regarding the lyrics:
As I've mentioned before, I am a synesthete. Lyrics are particularly important to me. Lyrics can affect the size and shape and colors of a song. (For more information, you can Google synesthesia.) I'm also enough of a language goon that something musically uninteresting can be perked up if the words are important. Being a very picky sort of reader, I've found that the inverse is also true for me: dull lyrics can ruin an otherwise perfect song.
Luckily, the lyrics are where Franz Ferdinand shines the most.
This band might be the contemporary incarnation of Oscar Wilde. The lyrics boast of being cruel, posh and carefree, but flash the smallest hints of concealed humanism. The language is also wonderfully overeducated--even the name is an obscure history reference.
Now that I've shown some love to their music and lyrics, I'm going to provide a quick YouTube sample so you can listen a bit for yourself. I'll even be bold and open with a slow song.
This "video" that I found online features back-to-back album versions of the songs Walk Away, Evil and a Heathen, and the immensely catchy You're the Reason I'm Leaving. This last song features an airy, metallic little guitar solo that I especially love. To my ears, the guitar solo sounds Important. (Capitol I.)
Mascara bleeds a blackened tear...
And I am cold, yes I'm cold, but not as cold as you are.
I love the sound of you walking away.
Why don't you walk away? No buildings will fall down!
Why don't you walk away? No quake will split the ground!
Why don't you walk away? The sun won't swallow the sky.
Why don't you walk away? Statues will not cry.
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There is a special, absolutely fearless daring found in some gay individuals who have learned to flourish in a culturally hostile environment. To kiss a boyfriend in conservative public is approximately the same act as laughing in the face of a firing squad. So cool. I don't know if I can say that this album epitomizes this cool, but there are quick flashes of it. Often too quick to catch. It's a bit like an Easter egg hunt, really. The next time you happen to hear the song Do You Want To, keep an ear pricked up. What did the protagonist do with "your famous friend?" How shocking!
The girlfriends who are more blatantly and openly written about on this album feel like sexually lukewarm, unwitting, emotionally-drained beards. I hate these hypothetical girls' hypothetical suffering and the complicated societal problems (and deceit) responsible for the traps that they now waste away in. To wax political for just another moment, in my mind the plight of the tragic, deceived beard is one more reason for the hetero crowd to support gay equality. Without a need for subterfuge--the gay folk can simply be gay, no unwanted wives required to keep up straight appearances--this form of romantic human sacrifice can come to a close.
In contrast to the tragic female beards, the secret gay boyfriends hinted at in this album are legendary, great loves. "I've seen some years, but you're still my Cesar." And so on. It feels emotionally honest and pithy, overflowing and bleeding with the horrible, constant emotional capture that being completely in love for a long, long time can cement. The pain of absolutely requiring ones' partner's physical presence. The inability to sleep when alone. It implies an intense, rich knowledge of almost every detail of the other person. I have to respect this passion and implied commitment, even while I'm resentful over the lost female beards.
*********************
This album gets extra points for what I believe could be the most clever, hidden little Rolling Stones pun that I have ever heard in a contemporary pop song. The first song on the album is sympathy for the devil... Without directly ripping off Sympathy for the Devil. Just winking at it a little bit. Instead of playing the devil and then asking for sympathy the way Mick Jagger did, the protagonist of this song is a slightly timid, slightly fearful temporary human companion of the devil, out for a drink and showing a bit of actual social sympathy. So, sympathy for the devil. For whatever reason, I think this is a total lark. When I "figured it out" or decided upon it or whatever, I think I laughed out loud. I think I was washing dishes at the time. It was a few years ago.
So we stole and drank champagne.
On the seventh seal you said you never feel pain.
"Eh-I never feel pain, won't you hit me again? I need a bit of black and blue to be a rotation!"
In my blood I felt bubbles burst.
There was a flash of fist, an eyebrow burst.
You've a lazy laugh and a red white shirt.
I fall to the floor,
Fainting at the sight of blood!
And WHILE I'm overthinking these songs and reading far too much into them (I do love to have something to chew on), one last wild stab at the jukebox:
In my mind, the song I'm Your Villain (which I completely adore) is a subtly gay Batman song, disguised as a histrionic lovers' spat. There, I said it. I know this isn't likely an original idea, but it's one that came to me and I do like it. They should have used this song in The Dark Knight. If I had been Heath Ledger, I would have listened to it on a loop to help me prepare as an actor. Even when Batman and the Joker are straight, the "we could fall in love and stroll around together if only you weren't so humorless and dull" flirtation in the lyrics could easily function as a sexless, taunting innuendo. I think it's keen.
Here is the song on YouTube, for your convenience. Please don't watch the video, as there's nothing much to see. Just keep it playing in the background while you do something else.
And that's the end of this post.
The Fallen is about hanging out with Jesus, not the devil. It actually has absolutely nothing to do with the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil at all. Also, Do You Want To was written as a joke, made up of ridiculous lines heard yelled at a party. The story of the song is that Alex Kapranos is telling this ridiculous story to a girl and subsequently asking her if she wants to hook up. Alex Kapranos, by the way, is straight, so unless you discovered his hidden gay, girl-hating agenda in his lyrics, I think you're pretty far off with the whole "beard" and "secret gay boyfriends" thing. I'm not even going to touch the whole Batman thing, that's just nonsense. Oh one more thing: they actually got the idea for their name from a race horse, not because they're history buffs.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! I had never specifically listened to them before and I enjoyed it. :)
ReplyDelete@LuvCherie: I'm glad you enjoyed reading it! Blogging is a very silly medium, but it's fun to try my hand at writing something other than academic papers and personal correspondence. :)
ReplyDelete@Seven: It is with a very heavy heart that I admit that you're most likely correct about quite a lot of what you just said. All of it is wicked-disappointing, like learning for the first time that there is no Santa Claus.
I'm still going to keep thinking of them as the Oscar Wilde pop band, but a little self-delusion and mental discipline here and there is likely required to keep it up at this point.
I had already heard that the official word in the press is that they're not gay, they're just doing what Lou Reed did and writing wink-wink love songs about men to be cute. The British tabloids interviewed their mothers who said "Oh no, our boys have always had girlfriends."
But I still cross my fingers and hope they actually, secretly do beard their ladies because I don't want Judas Priest and Queen to get lonely on the mainstream radio all by themselves like that. There are already so many straight bands getting mainstream attention.
I'll accept that they took their band name from a horse, but I'm not convinced that they were intellectually dull about its other meaning. They do make other references to 20th century history. For example, they knew enough to mention Salvador Dali's wife Gala by first name when talking about being consumed by a relationship. She's not the MOST obscure modern history reference, but it's something. I had to double-check the name to be sure. She was so predatory that she practically sucked the marrow right out of Dali's bones for food, but he remained her devoted pet. It's a cool reference to make in that context.
(Dropping a name like Gala is ALSO a subtle thing that helps fuel my now-weakened hope that they use a lot of wit to wink through the closet door. She's believed to be one of history's greatest beards. Their marriage was sexless--she kept boyfriends and he "kept to himself.")
Because Lucifer's distinction comes from being a fallen angel, I'm not 100% convinced of your argument about "The Fallen." At least, I'd very much LIKE it to be a song about showing sympathy for the devil. I HOPE it's a lyrical pun. The idea of that is very cute to me. Like if I wrote a song that very thoroughly described a stairway to heaven without ever actually using that phrase or the musical structure that Zeppelin used in theirs. Someone should put out an album of songs written that way.
Still, I suppose Lucifer didn't spit out fish and bread like that. That I'm aware of. Did he? I'm not as familiar with the New Testament and he's not much in the Old one. He's a bit of an A.D. addition to that faith.
If the song IS about Jesus, does that make "all the things that bring the idiots joy" the Hebrew religion? Does that make this a Christian band? Does that make them anti-Semitic? Oy. I suppose that would explain the line "it's not a jag in the arm it's a nail on the beam," though. Fuck!
And if they're Christian, what is your take on "Evil and a Heathen" later in the album? That they're just not particularly good or reverent Christians, but still not completely divorced from that faith?
Christ, it's all so disappointing. I think I'm going to have to start believing in Santa again to make up for all the loss.
:D