If you know me really at all you understand that I love Franz Ferdinand. Since I first heard Take Me Out I’ve just absolutely adored their mix of highbrow pop and white-boy funk, built so brilliantly from a mix of early Talking Heads and Wire. So it’s a little surprising that Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action slid completely past me when it was released back in August. I got really excited when it landed in my inbox.
And that was where I stopped being really excited. Sure, on first listen Right Thoughts rips- the opening combo of “Right Action” and “Evil Eye” has the punch we’ve come to expect from Alex Kapranos and company, and “Stand on the Horizon” has more than a bit of disco shimmering through it (in a positive way!) – but pretty quickly it becomes, as the title track says, “this time, same as before”. In more ways than one, Right Thoughts is a rehash of FF songs we’ve already heard. “Love Illumination” and “Bullet” tap into “This Fire” from the self-titled; “Evil Eye” is a pretty straight grab of “No You Girls”; “Fresh Strawberries” is the arbitrary slow-ish cheeky tune a la “Eleanor Put Your Boots Back On”.
That’s not saying it’s bad; au contraire, the Scotsmen have assembled a finely crafted piece of angular dance rock. It’s just we’ve heard it before. The second two FF records – You Could Have It So Much Better and Tonight! Franz Ferdinand – grew tremendously from the self-titled, adding layer upon layer to the sparse drums-n-Telecasters of their debut. But the only evolution on Right Thoughts is in Bob Hardy’s bass playing: it’s looser, more subtle, jazzier. If you isolate the bass tracks – especially “Stand on the Horizon” – Right Thoughts is an extended tribute to Tina Weymouth, and that’s really quite OK (given that half of FF’s sound is Talking Heads ’77).
A better thing than Right Thoughts is the bonus live-in-the-studio record Right Notes, Right Words, Wrong Order that accompanies some versions. FF performed about half of Right Thoughts (the better half), and threw on the hits from the last two records (including blistering takes of “Ulysses” and “Do You Want To”). Right Notes gets Franz Ferdinand right: the minimal production highlights the rawness of their guitar tones, the actual sweetness of Kapranos’ voice, and just how much pure funk is in their DNA. Every track form Right Thoughts is better on the bonus disc, even the tepid “Goodbye Lovers and Friends”. It’s why I’m jockeying for tickets when FF come to Seattle this spring.
Final Grade: B / A-. Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is just a Franz Ferdinand album – no more, no less (and a very front-loaded one at that). Right Notes, Right Words, Wrong Order, though, is the essence of Franz Ferdinand and gets the A- (an A if they swapped “Treason! Animals” for “Take Me Out”). Grab the whole of Right Notes, but from Right Thoughts you really only need “Right Action”, “Evil Eye”, “Stand on the Horizon”, and maybe “Love Illumination”.
Your Shitty Record Won't Review Itself 
Huh. I see your point about it being more of the same. But I love this album. I think, too, realising the FF nearly broke up before they recorded this album makes me like the album all the more. I love FF, Tonight, didn’t like it when it came out, but it grew on me, a lot, over the years. But I’ve played the hell outta this one.