Franz Ferdinand takes listeners to new heights with ‘Always Ascending’

Michaela Stock

As I listened to Franz Ferdinand’s new album Always Ascending for the first time, I felt like I was in a cinematic, 80’s disco café. I could practically feel my clunky white tennis shoes walking over celebratory movie theater carpet and around a honey-colored, wooden dance floor (with Franz as the DJ, of course). Franz Ferdinand’s album drop is his first release since Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action in 2013. If that’s not a reason to break out in disco, I don’t know what is.

Ferdinand’s synth-driven album has a film soundtrack, science fiction feel to it. Always Ascending contrasts eerie sounds with simple, joyful synth lines that hover between enjoyable and spastic. Right when I feel like I catch the grove of a riff or melody line, Franz skips ahead to the next section of the song. This feeling articulates what I believe could be the goal of the album, as the title asks the listener to be constantly moving.

Always Ascending is sonically experimental and playful. However, that does not prevent notes of seriousness from weaving its way into the work. Ferdinand’s track “Paper Cages” is an example of this, as the chorus comments on how we as people are “living our lives in paper cages” and we need to “step out”. Under the tune’s happy melody is a real and insightful truth: we need to step out of our own self-created confines of ourselves and the world.

Ferdinand continues to comment on society and himself throughout his album, Always Ascending. Particularly, Franz talks about happiness in his track “Academy Award.” In the song, Ferdinand tells a love story and presents the idea that we star in a film of our own life. It’s a bit of cliché, but the track quickly becomes charming when Franz claims that his lover wins the Academy Award for “good times”.

My favorite track on the album, however, is “Finally.” “Finally” is musically complex, engaging, and incorporates dynamic drum fills that do not feel rushed, pretentious, or out of place. The song is infused with tension, creativity, and a strange melody that features a call-and-response chant. “Finally” is a song of having found, of a search with a destination, of the destination not the journey, and the result of coming of age.

Overall, though, Always Ascending feels slightly stringy, haphazard, and directionless. It is sonically scattered, as I feel a few seconds behind every jump, bounce, and change taken in each song. This sporadic attitude creates a silly and carefree listening experience. However, underneath this, the work feels noise-driven to me rather than story or structurally driven. Listening to the album makes me feel like I am sitting in on a polished version of Franz’s unfished 3am writing sessions—which, in some ways, maybe I am.

The best way I can summarize Franz Ferdinand’s release of Always Ascending is with this: the album is an alternative disco ball hanging in space. Always Ascending’s sci-fi, occasionally eerie, synth-powered songs takes the listener on a spastic journey into love, out of paper cages, and finally, into themselves.