Fairly stupid article on Franz Ferdinand from an Australian paper.

That Franz Ferdinand are fond of such unrock notions as politeness,
humility and a Blairite New Labour-ish sense of national renewal shouldn't be a
shock. Though their music (designed, in Kapranos's words, "for girls to dance
to") marks a welcome break from the drab balladry that dominated the airwaves in
the slipstream of Britpop, it is not as revolutionary as their champions are
wont to suggest.

Their records and videos are suggestive of a school play about the early
'80s. Scabrous guitar lines, side-partings, a bit of stilted white funk, some
Dadaist intellectual exotica. Franz Ferdinand are a pretty good group, but
they're depressingly conservative.

This was posted to the Severed Heads list and inspired the expected burst of "these kids today thinking they're making revolutionary music when it can't hold a candle to the truly revolutionary music of our generation and blah blah blah sellout," etc., but this particular crotchety-and-earned-it perspective is one of the reasons I love the list, even if I disagree with the consensus opinion on most things. It did evidence an interesting out-of-it-ness in that most people seemed to think the Mercury Prize meant that people with good taste did indeed think they were revolutionary, whereas meh, I think popists and rockists alike have been generally dissatisfied with the winners in years past. Did inspire some unexpected defenses, though, the best of which was along the lines of, "Fucking Britons, don't know how good they have it..."

But anyway, that article! Whipping out the "music for girls to dance to" like it's an indictment! Sheesh. Folks, can we all agree rock music ain't gonna change the world, please? Or at least not the way you want it to.

UPDATE: Also courtesy the list, here's the Guardian article it was adapted from, which says some more things.

posted by Mike B. at 10:54 AM 0 comments