Franz Ferdinand – Always Ascending Review

Given that their last album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions was created out of the band’s near demise, the bookies odds on another Franz Ferdinand album even being made seemed to get longer with each passing year.

In the end the amicable departure of their original guitarist Nick McCarthy proved to be the catalyst for both new work but also new members in Julian Corrie and Dino Bardot, fresh impetus sorely needed as a subtle feeling of drift had begun to creep in.

Given that they shifted from pop-relevant to Centrist Dad playlist around the end of the previous decade Always Ascending has less responsibility to make waves, but still needed to tick the sort of boxes the evergreen Alex Kapranos would regard as minimum requirements, namely a canny posture and waspish feeling of simpatico. Out with the old, in the slightly less new: it’s the kind of challenge Franz Ferdinand have been rising to for longer than they’d like to admit.

You can read the review here. (A new window will open).