Listening Station

Franz Ferdinand

There's an awful a lot of hype following around Franz Ferdinand, the upstart Scottish quartet angling for more than a glimmer of the rock press spotlight. British music pubs like NME love a hammy band--see the Hives and the Vines--and these flamboyant dance-rockers seem to mug and barb like it's Britpop-peaking 1995. Well, so does the Darkness--another east-of-the-Atlantic act receiving nearly lethal amounts of publicity. But in the case of Franz Ferdinand, its irony is real, its tunes don't lean on novelty and its performance fee for summer music festivals isn't an outrageous million pounds.

Franz Ferdinand's breathless, debut longplayer has so many elements bowling you over at once, you nearly overlook the superfluity of musical references on parade here--or is it the other way around? At one listen, you can't help but marvel at the band's mastery of the necessary rock basics: compelling hooks, tight arrangements, deft musicianship, unwavering identity and memorable lyricism. Follow that up with a cursory repeat and, without betraying its distinctiveness, the floodgates of pop inspiration open: the Kinks and fellow labelmate Clinic ("Jacqueline"), the Strokes and the Waitresses ("Take Me Out"), the Beatles and the Rapture ("The Dark of the Matinee"), David Bowie and the Smiths ("Michael"), and Blondie and ABBA ("Come On Home").

More than anything, Franz Ferdinand is a good-time exercise in sincerity, something you'd wish modern rock would accomplish more often, as opposed to running on sheer manic energy (see Electric 6 and Hot Hot Heat) or guarding itself through self-styled hesitancy (the Strokes and Interpol). When vocalist/guitarist Alex Kapranos sings, "Michael, you're the boy with all the leather hips/ sticky hair, sticky hips, stubble on my sticky lips," he's simultaneously transgressive and earnest. Astride the band's wit and buoyancy is an unmistakable romanticism, and such balancing emphasizes the songs themselves--a refreshing approach that transcends any post-punk/post-disco associations and earns Franz Ferdinand its sudden pop ascendancy.--Mike Prevatt

"Demons"

Demonology

Judging by the cover of the "Demons" new retrospective Demonology--a black-and-blue rendering that pits the Swedish foursome against a boundless mob of thugs, hoodlums and nogoodniks--the band easily could have played one of the street gangs in the 1979 goon-stravaganza The Warriors. At the very least, they would have been more bad-ass than the Baseball Furies or The Punks, whose leader wore overalls and charged into brawls on roller skates. Plus, the "Demons" have that charmingly hopeless, us-against-the-world attitude--an outlook neatly summed in the motto, "If you can't join us, beat us."

And their approach to music seems to match. According to frontman Mathias Carlsson's abundant liner notes, Demonology "is not an attempt to, for nostalgic reasons, make a collection to showcase a band's development or accomplishments over a number of years. Fuck that! Not interesting." Instead, the album collects outtakes and out-of-print singles--including a cover of The Misfits' "She"--and presents them buffed and polished and newly remastered. Overall, it's an exhilarating jolt--a hell-for-leather joyride that kicks you in the teeth before it kicks you to the curb.

Like the New Bomb Turks, the "Demons" have always been defined by their buckle-down dedication to old-school punk revivalism, so don't expect much variety out of Demonology--just 16 tracks of greaser spit and punkabilly shine. Standouts abound, although the cover of the Pagans' classic "What's This Shit Called Love" is even better than the much-hyped rendition by the Meatmen on 1985's War of the Superbikes. Other highlights include a cover of the New York Dolls' "Puss N' Boots" and "Beat On Me," which further encapsulates the band's self-destructive worldview: "Beat me, come on, beat me/ Beat me till I bleed." Even 25 years later, there's still nothing more punk than that.--Newt Briggs

The Olivia Tremor Control

Music from the unrealized film script, Dusk at Cubist Castle

That fledgling label Cloud Recordings turned to reviving old work for its third and fourth official releases remains a surprising move. Expectation begs new projects. However, that Dusk at Cubist Castle was ever out of print is even more perplexing and embarrassing.

The three years the Olivia Tremor Control spent recording and tweaking its debut in the early '90s certainly afforded the band necessary leisure and musical/conceptual freeplay. As direct consequence, the album stands as a well-conceived, understated first work. Combining Brian Wilson pop-polyphonic sensibilities with metaphysics, phenomenology, psychedelia, Cubist Castle pirouettes around the kingdom in Gertrude Stein's blue boxers. (Or are they boxer-briefs? Lady likes her nouns loose, britches snug.) Hell, Stein's equine Roman profile even makes a cameo in "Define a Transparent Dream." OTC's interplay of time, perception, presence obeys a continuum common with Stein, as well as cubist-progenitors Picasso and Braque (Cubist Castle architect and landscaper, respectively). To boot, at the root of these various academic/hallucinogenic overlays remain some simply inspired, brilliantly produced melodies. And where else but from Athens' Elephant 6 complex can you get quirky, sunny-pop ditties about discorporation?

Given W. Cullen Hart's affinity for creating visual, as well as sonic, landscapes, as evinced by the interior artwork of any OTC/Circulatory System record, most of which is his own, it's a wonder Cubist Castle has yet to be realized in film. As a musical, animated romp starring Tom Arnold as the Frosted Ambassador, Carol Channing the Cubist Queen. Watch Pixar silently eat its own computer-generated heart.--Chad Lietz