Album Review: Franz Ferdinand – “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand”

Trends always expose themselves on the third album. The Look only buys you so much time. Catchy singles only take you so far. By album three, you're either the White Stripes or you're Jet. Or, you're Franz Ferdinand, stuck in that untenable middle ground - milking the same-song formula for all it's worth, and in turn, fielding diminishing returns. So it goes, Tonight's "Ulysses" takes on "Do You Want To," which was take-two on "Take Me Out." That's a lot of "takes" for one sentence, not so many for three and a half years - the time between albums. And if this seems like a momentum killer, well, it is. So too are these songs - "Turn It On" and "Live Alone." They're all the same, really: slinky little danceable groove rockers that have three things in common. All catchy, all disposable, all written by a band destined to be the answer to a trivia question.