Franz Ferdinand are back with their first full album in seven years. Despite being in their third iteration with just two original members, The Human Fear is suave and confident: bravely incorporating sounds we’ve not heard from them before.
Leading up to the release, the band dropped three singles, which gave us an interesting flavour of what the album would become in its entirety.
“Alright, here we go with riff one” begins ‘Audacious’, the track chosen for the album’s first single. After listening to the rest of the album, releasing this track first doesn’t do it justice. The verses are snappy and more riveting than the chorus, which is blissful and airy. “Don’t go blaming the neighbours / You know they’re the same as us”. One thing about ‘Audacious’ is that it shows that the band continue to shift the dynamic of their songwriting, reacting and finding a place in today’s odd political climate.
They continue to lean their ears into the public mood with second single ‘Night Or Day’ where lead singer Kapranos admits that life will never be easy, so we might as well just live it up. A lively energetic piano brings a sense of urgency and it has a quirky synth segment just after the chorus. Kapranos’ voice remains strong and assertive throughout.
This energy is maintained with ‘Hooked’: a robotic dance-track where the frontman utters the album’s title words “I got the human fear”. Kapranos deepens his voice to a gravelly, flirtatious growl, with some added vocal effects. Paired with an electronic beat, this ultimately gives the song a Pet Shop Boys feel, except Franz Ferdinand have more vigour compared to the Pet Shop Boys’ buoyancy.
‘Black Eyelashes’ is a true standout of all the non-singles as the band explores Greek Rebetiko. A bouzouki carries the animated track which tells a story of Kapranos exploring his Greek roots: “As I walked through Κολωνάκι”. As percussion surrounds Kapranos’ layered voice, the track is so animated that it’s easy to visualise the scene in Greece: swaithes of folk dancing under the orange sunset.
Similarly, ‘Cats’ has a country-shuffle feel to it which is reminiscent of their 2006 track ‘L. Wells’. Beyond looking at their own history, ‘Tell Me I Should Stay’ starts with a dramatic piano sequence which sounds like the buildup to a power ballad. This is subdued by a surprising reggae rhythm before throwing another curveball and landing us into a chorus which sounds like a pastiche of the Beach Boys’ ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’. The band have not been hesitant to take fragments of genres and mesh them with the band’s typical, post-punk flare for this album. It’s imaginative and doesn’t feel like it’s just chasing modern or different sounds for easy plays and repeats
After all that, ‘Everydaydreamer’ is easy to overlook if you’ve just relished in the liveliness of the previous tracks. But, in the right mood, when you’re perhaps feeling reflective, the sweet, synthy baseline becomes quite moving. The band put down all that verve for a second and reassure us that “Every dream goes”.
On Always Ascending, Kapranos sang about explaining our NHS to Americans on ‘Huck And Jim’, and now, ‘The Doctor’ turns that appreciation for the country’s health workers into an, ironically, unhealthy attachment (“Can’t you see? / That I have a good bed here? / I don’t want to leave here”). This track hints at a fear of loneliness, and unhealthy attachment, just some aspects of The Human Fear that the band speak of. After years of catapulting indie-sleaze and throwing illegal parties to recently becoming a father, maybe Kapranos is starting to feel a little vulnerable.
With the remaining tracks, Franz Ferdinand drop their wild harvest of outside ideas and remind us that they can easily make simple, straight forward indie tracks. ‘Build It Up’ being one of them. They performed this track live as far back as 2019, where they performed it at the Europavox Festival in France in June of that year, so it’s been a long time coming but fits the album nicely.
They do the same with ‘Bar Lonely’, an easy listening song which would fittingly slot into a driving playlist but isn’t necessarily one you’d actively go straight back to. ‘The Birds’ sees Kapranos admit, “Thank you for accepting me / Despite what I have done” over an array of guitar flicks that are slick and fun.
Compared to 2018’s Always Ascending, this album doesn’t necessarily have more to say in terms of lyrical depth, but it is musically more interesting.
On The Human Fear, Franz Ferdinand are up to tricks both new and old. It could be so easy for them to keep on writing the “flick your cigarette and then kiss me” style lyrics that came with their first debauched decade in music that were sexy and synonymous with an unpredictable night out. This time around, they adopt a range of emotions non-specific to a time or place, proving they can go anywhere and always be Franz Ferdinand.
Words by Kai Palmer
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