Well, wonders never cease. Me doing a proper mainstream music review! I have thus far written roughly 70 reviews on classical and film music of varying popularity during my time on the review sites, but never have I ventured into the realms of what more normal young people should be into. That is until I was challenged to do so by the eminent musicologist Monsieur Steerpyke of Wessex on the grounds that he would try to do a classical review himself. Well, after some consultation with my sister, here is my answer to the challenge - for better or for worse - about the debut album of the Glasgow-based band Franz Ferdinand, ingeniously titled "Franz Ferdinand". Now before I really get into the meat of it I think it will be good of people to note that I don't usually listen to music of this kind, so my approach will probably differ somewhat from the established norm of fanboyish glowing and centre more on the actual musical merits and enjoyability from my point of view (which my complete inability to actually listen to lyrics may also be partly accounted for). So without more ado, may the dissecting begin.

As a whole the album can be described as being melodically softish rock that generally avoids needless bombast and simple noise to present easily enjoyable and memorable tunes, while not presenting anything really in the way of innovative. For all its worth this approach works like a charm in not pushing things too way over the top and working all the traditional components into a functioning, nicely flowing whole without really sounding generic at all. And while there are moments when the music just becomes an almost ceaseless wall of sound with little textures, it is not a major detriment. Beginning with the song "Jacqueline", this opening number begins almost like a ballad à la an old folk song before the guitars really kick in and let the rockier elements free reign, effectively setting the overall sound of what is to follow, though the ending is a little too abrupt. "Tell Her Tonight" on the other hand moves forward mostly by its very mobilemente style of forward pushing momentum and while the actual vocal usage is somewhat irritating, it is not a bad song per se.

"Auf Achse" begins rather strangely with an electronic "theremin" sound of sci-fi coupled with electronic keyboard that gives a funnily fluffy comedy-sci fi sound to it. It's most certainly a lot less serious than either of the two previous songs, but makes for quite a fun listen as a whole. Now the downturn of the album takes place at track 6, "Cheating on You," where the preceding variation between songs starts to wear off and the final half of the album sounds more and more similar. Particularly "Cheating on You" and "Michael" tend to present an almost cacophonous wall of sound that makes my ears ring upon longer exposion. And while the openings of most of the songs start promisingly enough, they often descend into more anonymous noise, that makes these songs sound more filler than the beginning of the album (albeit the organ sounds of "Come on Home" are quite interesting). The final song, "40 ft," somewhat amusingly reminds me of some old Nintendo game soundtrack, which doesn't mean it is bad, just a bit amusing and at least offers a nice conclusion to the album in being less in your face. But the lack of a properly catchy melody makes the final part of the album unfortunately less interesting and disconnected from the first part.