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CRITIC REVIEWS
90
Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is relentless and overall a raging boner of success!
11y
83
The mix of Alex Kapranos’ louche croon with the band’s disciplined racket is still a knockout, and they’ve switched things up enough to keep it interesting.
80
While Tonight: Franz Ferdinand might not take all the chances those early reports suggested, it shows the band examing their world from all angles, from the unflattering profile in the mirror behind the batr to the long hard look into the soul. Life in three dimensions suits them very well indeed.
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1y
80
Franz go electro, embrace their true nature, and make their best album yet.
11y
80
You can call the new Franz Ferdinand smug and arrogant but this album will be played countless times in months to come.
10y
80
This might not be the ‘music of the night’ that rotund talent show type Lloyd Webber and his phantoms had in mind, but based on the majority of this album Messrs Kapranos, Hardy, McCarthy and Thomson can definitely take us out tonight.
11y
80
A strong return for the band after their hiatus.
10y
73
After a few years of non-stop activity that found them moving from clubs to a Mercury Prize win and Grammy performance, Franz Ferdinand took time off and have re-emerged with an album that, more so than stoking current commerical prospects, is an exciting look at the band's potential future.
13y
71
While hardly the evolutionary leap forward that the band had suggested was afoot, Tonight is still, inarguably, fine for now.
11y
70
Does Tonight satisfy what we were all hoping for after three years between albums, along with the lofty expectations that are by definition bound to accompany a concept album/rock opera? Probably not. But, is it better than You Could Have It So Much Better? Definitely, if not only for the points on the record where Kapranos and company get it oh so right.
11y
70
If not boasting the most sophisticated of concepts, the record does have an overarching narrative about seemingly endless nights spent out on the club circuit.
70
Even at just 42 minutes, Tonight is relentless, yet the comedown is exquisite.
11y
70
Taken as a whole, it’s the rare album that flirts with enough styles that it renders notions of classification irrelevant, and ultimately more of a Franz Ferdinand album than a dance album.
11y
70
It's often catchy and kinetic in the moment, yet it still feels like Franz Ferdinand has the potential to do more with their music than just slightly tweak and polish a sound they established several albums ago.
13y
70
All in all, the band just isn’t as melodically inclined this time around, and it’s a damn shame, too, because by and large, this still remains the band’s most adventurous outing to date — just not their most memorable.
11y
70
Tonight isn’t a bad album by any means, and it’s certainly an improvement on their last effort. But at the same time you can’t shake the feeling that they missed a trick.
13y
70
Franz Ferdinand mainly stick to their small, intensely flavorful basics, packing songs with tempo changes and propulsive guitar riffs.
70
A concept album in reverse-as the band only realized during sequencing that the songs told the story of a long night of hedonism that ends in loneliness-the arena-sized hooks and shout-along choruses remain, but the grooves are always at the album’s center.
10y
70
Although Tonight incorporates more keyboards and a hint of studio experimentation, it’s still very much a classic Franz Ferdinand album that is instantly infectious and catchy.
68
Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is probably the band's strongest set yet.
10y
67
As usual, their guitar interplay is well-lubricated and dirty when appropriate, but in spite of the reheated disco tropes and skronky electronics, much of Tonight feels like it's been forged with the same stale, trademarked chorus in hand.
11y
60
Away from the too numerous mid-tempo rockers, What She Came For, single Ulysses and, particularly, the massively catchy Dream Again are streets ahead of their nearest contemporaries such as White Lies.
60
Now they sound less like they're playing to their strengths and more like they're admitting their limitations; they'll keep trying to move your hips because they know they'll never win your heart. Tonight is fine, but will you still love them tomorrow?
60
Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is a good album. But not a great one. And it's not the musical transformation that we've been promised. So enjoy it, dance to it, and ignore the suspicion that four years down the line we'll be writing the same review.
60
There's plenty of evidence on Tonight... of attempts at broadening their palette, but it's usually by substituting jerky guitar for jerky synthesizer as the lead instrument.
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1y
60
This third LP is an improvement but the niggle remains: decent songs like Ulysses and Twilight Omens have about them an air of déjà entendu.
60
The crown has slipped for the Scottish pop kings.
60
You sense that compromises have been made between the desire to do something artistically challenging and the desire to retain both continuity and fanbase, and that, often, the compromise reached is the wrong one.
60
At its best, the disc forges a middle ground where the trebly guitar power is fortified by the electronics, resulting in a new propulsion. At its worst, the disc is as meaningful as “superstar DJ” sets, designer drugs and having your picture taken by the Cobrasnake.
60
Tonight is a potentially pivotal record for a band whose goodwill well - overflowing four years ago - is quickly running dry.
10y
60
There's still enough innovation and experimentation among the banalities here to suggest that they might have a great fourth album in them.
13y
60
They’ve defied compartmentalisation again, managed to avoid crippling themselves in their dramatic reduction of outright 'singles' material, and left the door open to a number of future experiments. Unfortunately it just means that Tonight becomes a makeweight.
13y
40
Rather than risk experimenting with anything radically new, they’ve cautiously tried tweaking their tempos and varying instrumental textures here and there in hopes that listeners won’t notice that they’ve written the same song about romantic frustration in 12 slightly different ways.
13
Truly, the four dapper Scotsmen that constitute this group should be ashamed of their tuneless, thoughtless, meaningless new offering, which distorts the proud legacy of a band that once mattered.
11y
“Tonight: Franz Ferdinand” makes me feel like I’ve been invited to the party of the century and relistening to it for this review makes me feel like I’m reliving the party all over again. *Checks Wikipedia…* Yeah, I’m not surprised that’s intentional.
This album overthrew “Lateralus” by TOOL as my most favorite album overall and it’s not hard to see why. Concept songs that are meant to invoke certain imagery and feelings always ... read more
Franz Ferdinands, tonight sees a musical switch up that I think works fairly well on this album. A more electronic disco sound and they pull it off fairly well. Some of the songs on here can feel a little empty especially towards the back end but in summary this album is pretty good
While a really good sound switch up for the band, I can’t exactly give much credit from there.
I really liked the ideas this album brings out, of being a semi-concept album about a night out to the club. And I really liked how it took that story further by embracing influences and sounds of electropop and dance pop into its sound. However, while the highs are great, sometimes even being some of their best like “Ulysses” and “No You Girls”, the lows are also the ... read more
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Track List
| 1 | Ulysses 3:13 | 92 |
| 2 | Turn It On 2:23 | 88 |
| 3 | No You Girls 3:44 | 89 |
| 4 | Send Him Away 2:32 | 87 |
| 5 | Twilight Omens 3:01 | 87 |
| 6 | Bite Hard 3:31 | 87 |
| 7 | What She Came For 3:28 | 90 |
| 8 | Live Alone 3:36 | 83 |
| 9 | Can't Stop Feeling 3:05 | 82 |
| 10 | Lucid Dreams 7:58 | 92 |
| 11 | Dream Again 3:20 | 77 |
| 12 | Katherine Kiss Me 2:56 | 77 |
Total Length: 42 minutes
Year End Lists
| #22 | / | Rolling Stone |
| #36 | / | Beats Per Minute |
| #38 | / | Treble |
| #43 | / | NME |
| #47 | / | NPR |
