Franz Ferdinand: Always Ascending

Grade: A

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Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

Yay, people with a modicum of wit. They come along so very rarely these days. A decade on and that punky, guitar-driven power-pop funk has long since been expunged. Singer Alex Kapranos expressed a wish for Franz Ferdinand to reinvent themselves — and has turned to the same source inspiration as did their recent collaborators Sparks when they, too, needed a swift reboot at the end of the 1970s: Giorgio Moroder. But Kapranos and co. have laced those metronomic German beats with camp glamour and swirling, unpredictable melodies — and, of course, the frequent touch of Bowie.

This is a disco-pop album. But even at its dumbest — on ‘Finally’ and ‘Huck and Jim’ — there is always something to hold the attention, an unexpected hook or an outré chord change.