Are there people out there who hate Franz Ferdinand? Most bands with their kind of success, and indeed their kind of music, tend to have their lovers and their haters in roughly equal measure. Franz, from what I can tell, seem to have avoided this, and with good reason. Whatever you think of the rest of their music, they do a fucking great single. 'Dark of the Matinee', 'Take Me Out', 'This Fire', 'Michael', 'Do You Wanna?', 'The Fallen', it feels rare for a pop band, in recent times, to have released such consistently memorable and enjoyable singles. They also seem to carry a weight of intellectualism - the literary references, avant-garde Russian art influences on both their album covers and in their music - without ever seeming pretentious - always sticking to their original remit of making music "that teenage girls will want to dance to". On the other hand, are there people out there who love Franz Ferdinand? As solid and consistent as their output has been, it's hard for me to imagine Franz being anyone's favourite band, or the creators of anyone's favourite album. It might just be the circles that I hang out in, and of course it's perfectly probable that there are vast swathes of people out there for whom Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is the only thing worth living for, but Franz seem to exist somewhere inbetween, liked by everyone, loved by no-one.This pre-amble is important - because Tonight: Franz Ferdinand will do nothing to change any of this. It's good, but it's not that good. It's as a catchy as syphilis, but, like syphilis, I could probably live without it. Opener and first single 'Ulysses' is as good as anything they've done since 'Take Me Out', and sets the tone for the rest of the album - precise, almost machine-esque percussion; steady dancefloor bassline; those crunchy, angular Franz Ferdinand guitars; plus their new synthesiser. It represents merely a new level to Franz's sound rather than a fresh direction, but it's a new level that helps the record be, in the words of Alex Kapranos himself, "a little friendlier to the dancefloor." Although he did say this after describing the band's last album as being like "a teenager having sex", so take your salt in pinches and all that.The closing four tracks might be the strongest run Franz have ever commited to record. 'Can't Stop' seems like an even more obvious choice for single than 'Ulysses', and final track 'Katherine Kiss Me' is the kind of song that could only close the album - just Kapranos and an acoustic guitar, he revisits the themes from the album in three quiet minutes. It's 'Lucid Dreams' that is bound to take the most praise. For four and half minutes, it's a Franz Ferdinand song. In it's final three, though... I don't quite know what to say. The best I can come up with is NIN-esque, and I'm hoping that's the first time anyone has compared Franz to Trent Reznor. Remember NIN's 'The Great Destroyer'? It's that. How the hell is it that?! It's synths and beeps and mechanical rhythm, and it's fucking glorious. There is so much about 'Lucid Dreams' that just shouldn't work and somehow, after a minute or so of "WTF" you're in there, carried along on a bizarre wave of trance that still manages to be pop and still manages to be on a Franz Ferdinand album and not feel completely out of place.I feel drained just writing about it. But there it is. Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is probably the band's strongest set yet. They feel like they've matured, they now feel like a band who could keep writing quality pop music for years to come, mainly because they've shown that they can incoporate new ideas without compromising their sound or their remit to create music to dance to, which is more than the majority of the current crop of radio-friendly tight-jeaned silly-hair-cutted trendy "indie" bands could hope for. Nevertheless, it's a Franz Ferdinand album. It's not gonna set the world on fire, and in six months time I don't expect I'll still be playing it, and I don't expect many people to remember it when the time rolls around once again for album of the year lists. But unlike the majority of music we review on TLOBF, at least it's a CD you can put on at a party and not get funny looks from your friends. 68%Franz Ferdinand on Myspace