Blood: Franz Ferdinand

Remix albums are often dubious affairs. Sure, they’re interesting, but are they necessary? For Scotland’s Franz Ferdinand, Blood, the band’s fourth album, alters the outcome of their previous album, Tonight, to the point that the songs deserve their new titles. This isn’t just a remix, but a reinvention of the group’s parameters. Often steeped in the echo of dub, Blood has a transcendent feel that takes the band out of their current pop-rock milieu and into an artsy landscape where their rhythms are sedated, the bass is deepened, and singer Alex Kapranos loses that hyper-yip for a hypnotic, otherworldly spell. “Katherine Hit Me” cruises with a slight nod towards pop — at least in comparison to the longer, drawn out exercises that form the second half of the album, beginning with the slow, spaced pace of “Backwards On My Face” (which was once allegedly the track “Twilight Omens”) and climaxing with the ethereal heavy dub pulse of “Feel the Envy” and “Be Afraid.” The overall weirdness is impressive. Franz Ferdinand clearly have no interest in having their style or sound pigeonholed.