Domino
2003
Franz Ferdinand
About This Album
Although Franz Ferdinand has been hailed as "Scotland's answer to Interpol," their debut EP, Darts of Pleasure, reveals the band as much weirder and wider-ranging than their impeccably dressed American counterparts. Admittedly, the chunky, angular guitars that propel the EP's opening track, "Darts of Pleasure," do sound akin to those on Interpol's "PDA," and Franz Ferdinand's singer, Alex Kapranos, has an insistent baritone voice that recalls both Paul Banks and Ian Curtis. However, it's not likely that Interpol would finish a song with a galloping coda sung in German, as Franz Ferdinand does. The song's surreal sensuality -- displayed in lyrics like "You can feel my lips undress your eyes" -- further separates the band from their contemporaries, as do the rest of the songs on Darts of Pleasure. "Van Tango" celebrates the "king of the night" with a strangely bouncy strut that's part glam rock and part art school, and overall much geekier (in the best possible way) than anything that most of the bands Franz Ferdinand are compared to would create. That goes double for the theatrical, political "Shopping for Blood," which decries the encroachment of English ways and tastes on Scottish culture.
Track List

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