Battle of the Bands 07.29.09: Franz Ferdinand vs. Arctic Monkeys
Posted by Adam Battagello on 07.29.2009
Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand take on the Arctic Monkeys in a singles clash from each group's third album.
Greetings to all and welcome to this weeks Battle of the Bands, some may call this kind of format overly confrontational, and to those people I say, fight me!
First things first, I can send only the best wishes to Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys after he was recently diagnosed with a cancerous parotid gland. Reports are circling that the condition is highly treatable so with time we will hopefully see him back at his best. God knows losing a founding member of one of modern music's most influential groups would be nothing short of a tragedy.
I have been highly anticipating this week's matchup, as both respective groups have impressed me greatly in their still young careers. So, let's get to the face off, and see which band can pull off the big win.
This Week:
Franz Ferdinand- Can't Stop Feeling vs. Arctic Monkeys- Crying Lightning
Earlier this year Franz Ferdinand released what was, in my humble opinion, an absolute gem of an album in ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand'. I had begun to have my doubts about the band after their 2005 sophomore effort ‘You Could Have It So Much Better' really failed to live up to the hype of their debut, but with ‘Tonight...' the four lads from Glasgow really blew any of their previous work out of the water.
What can I really say that hasn't been said about the Arctic Monkeys? The group is proof that bands who make their name via the internet are more than capable of making it big in the more traditional formats of music. The first two albums from the Arctic Monkeys seem to be setting them up for a run of great albums to come, but, will is the new single a step forward for the band?
Franz Ferdinand- Can't Stop Feeling
Right off the bat I can say that, in an album full of great songs, Can't Stop Feeling wasn't originally one of my favorites. That doesn't so much speak to the weakness of this particular track as it does to the strength of the rest of the album. I had always seen other tracks on the album such as ‘Bite Hard' or ‘Lucid Dreams' as being better potential singles, but I guess that's why they're the band, and I'm the guy sitting at his laptop writing about the band.
Personal preference aside, when examined as a single release, Can't Stop Feeling holds up remarkably well, the lyrics are simple and the music is overly danceable, a wise combination for any band wishing to release a successful single in the modern musical climate.
The film clip for the track, while clearly made on what looks to be a razor thin budget, is more enjoyable than any clip I can remember watching in recent memory. Forget large-scale production teams and an endless stream of record label dollars; I'll take watching a bunch of white guys dance in the prototypical ‘white guy' style and performing seemingly random acts any day.
In short, this is the kind of song that really tempts yours truly into pulling out dance moves in a public place. Forget modern dance music that seems to permeate every corner of every nightspot as well of every inch of your brain as it's blasted through the speakers, if I owned a club, this would be the kind of song that got played. Dancey enough for the dancers, rocking enough for the rockers.
Moving on!
Arctic Monkeys- Crying Lightning
To say I am a fan of the Arctic Monkeys body of work would be an understatement. If you were to take a look at my itunes you would find albums, demos and rarities galore. So when I heard that the boys had an album due out in August and that, even better, it was being produced by Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme I was a little more than excited. But still I'll be totally impartial…
The first single ‘Crying Lightning' from the forthcoming album is certainly a step in a new direction for the band, gone are the days of the acne covered lads pushing out poppy tracks like ‘I Bet You Look Good On the Dance floor', in their place stand four men dabbling on the edges of psychedelic rock.
The influence of Homme as a producer as well as recording entirely in the United States is instantly recognizable in this sort of single. Under Homme's watchful eye the Arctic Monkeys seem to have developed a raw musical sensibility that before they never seemed to possess. The group's earlier work, while good, felt rather safe, and never really tested the creative boundaries of the young band. In comparison, with new tracks such as ‘Crying Lightning' Alex Turner seems much more willing to push the band into uncharted waters so to speak. Ironic considering the clip for the song is the group sailing a boat through hostile seas.
As a songwriter, lead singer Alex Turner is on another plain as far as lyrical capacity goes, his ability to weave complex narratives without sacrificing a pop sensibility should be the envy of many a lead singer. It seems his time spent working on the side project The Last Shadow Puppets has allowed him to develop even further when it comes to penning absolutely mind-boggling lyrics. Something that it has to be assumed has carried over into his latest work with Arctic Monkeys.
If there is any major fault in the track itself, I found the film clip for Crying Lightning to be rather dull when compared with its competitor this week. While I can kind of see the intended message in the 'traveling into uncharted waters' theme that I proposed before, that still doesn't change the fact that the clip itself is essentially boring. A general gauge for a film clip's effectiveness for me personally is whether or not I would still be willing to sit through it in the future after having it on constant repeat for the purposes of this article. While I would have no problem sitting through and even enjoying the Franz Ferdinand clip again, I had honestly tired of the video effort of the Arctic Monkeys after only the third or fourth play through
There can only be one!
This week, it has to be the Arctic Monkeys. While both tracks are pretty much surefire hits as singles based on their own merits, I just gathered the impression that the Arctic Monkeys have pushed themselves further and tested their own artistic abilities to a greater degree on this record, in comparison to their previous works. While Franz Ferdinand's latest output is no slouch, at the end of the day it isn't really anything we haven't heard from the group in the past, and this was the major factor that hurt them in my final judgment.
And there we have it. Until next week, happy sailing.
