On my voyage through all the Sparks albums, some of which I haven’t heard in 20 or 30 years, here is my review of ‘FFS’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t really know who Franz Ferdinand are, also this is my first time listening to this album. It seems like a very ‘Sparks’ like album to me. I’ll have to delve into FF to see if I can pick out more of their influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Johnny Delusional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sounds like something that easily could have been on ‘Woofer’. I like these two singing together. A lot of times on duets with two male singers, the voices aren’t different enough from each other to make the fact that it’s a duet interesting. Not the case here, it sounds great. 9\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Call Girl<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sounds like it could have been one of the better tracks on an 80s Sparks album. It’s good, snakey, kinda sleazy sounding. I can’t tell if Russel is singing in here or not. 8\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. Dictator’s Son<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like the song. I’m not a fan of all the distortion on the vocals. It worked on the last song for me, but on this sort of dense song where the instrumentation is more or less following the vocals, it just makes everything sound muddy. The vocals are overly tuned for my taste too. I like the lyrics. 6\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4. Little Guy From the Suburbs<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nice dreamy song that sounds like it belongs on a movie soundtrack. It sounds like one of the songs on a Pink Floyd soundtrack album; also has a little Leonard Cohen vibe. It’s pleasant enough, I don’t love it. 6\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5. Police Encounters<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another 80s throwback. Again, weird distortion on the vocals. I’m really not sure why they made that choice. This is a good uptempo song, one that easily could have been on ‘Whomp’ or something. I like this. It all seems kind<\/em> of like a step backward for Sparks. I should keep trying to remember that it IS a collaboration. 8\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Save Me From Myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An urgent, kind of dangerous sounding song. I like the instrumentation. I keep hearing flashes of ‘old’ Sparks on this album. It’s not a bad thing by any means, but it’s weird for them. They always seemed like they moved in a direction and seldom looked back. This too could have easily been a song on one of the glam albums. 8\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. So Desu Ne<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ummm. Okay. So I’m not someone that’s going to go and get offended on some other groups behalf but\u2026stereotypes abound here! I get kind of an ‘I’ll give you television\u2026I’ll give you eyes of blue’ kind of feeling. I’ll just say I wouldn’t have written this song in 2015. Anyway, I like the music. 7\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. The Man Without a Tan<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cool new wave feeling bass line. What a weird song. I think I kind of love it. Some strings in here unexpectedly, very big vocals. It’s another one where I really enjoy the two singers together. 9\/10. That might be too low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. Things I Won’t Get<\/p>\n\n\n\n A bunch of songs on this album keep reminding me of someone else. I think<\/em> it’s Rick Wright sung Pink Floyd, but I’m not positive. The FF singer has a very similar delivery to Rick Wright. I like the lyrics. 6\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. The Power Couple<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another weird song. Some of the lyrics have to be Ron’s ‘Segovia seems a very safe choice, we’ll cue it all up when we hear the Roll Royce’. 7\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. Collaborations Don’t Work<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interesting title choice. Very much a song that could have been on one of the recent Sparks albums. It’s got the same sort of instrumentation, repetitive chorus, lots of bombast. I like the over the top vocals in the middle, then the driving part. I take the title to mean they took a bunch of disparate parts of songs and stuck them together. It actually does work for me. 9\/10<\/p>\n\n\n\n 12. Piss Off<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another song that seems like it easily could have been on ‘Whomp’. 80s keyboard sounds and funny lyrics. It’s a good album closer. 8\/10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t have any business rating this album, I’ve only heard it once. So my initial impression of the album is a 7.6\/10. It seemed a little uneven, but enough good stuff on here that I ordered myself a copy, and I think it will grow on me more on repeated listens. Next up, ‘Hippopotamus’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On my voyage through all the Sparks albums, some of which I haven’t heard in 20 or 30 years, here is my review of ‘FFS’. I don’t really know who Franz Ferdinand are, also this is my first time listening to this album. It seems like a very ‘Sparks’ like album to me. I’ll have… Continue reading FFS – 2015<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hearthfireband.com\/sparks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}