record reviews

Muse

Album: “Drones” Grade: A-

Only Muse could turn what it planned as its “back-to-basics” album into a complicated concept album like “Drones” (Warner Bros.). “Drones” is so complex, the unpredictable British rockers want to turn it into a musical for London’s West End.

Singer-lyricist Matt Bellamy has built a multilayered story of a young, disillusioned guy who enlists in the service and is lured into becoming a drone operator. In the glam-rock stomper “Drones,” his job is described by his superior officer as “a Super Drone, and you will kill on my command and I won’t be responsible.”

The narrator’s transformation plays out across the album, with moments of doubt. “Mercy” is the album’s strongest track, not just because Bellamy makes the narrator’s predicament sound so emotional, but because the driving rhythms from drummer Dom Howard and bassist Chris Wolstenholme make the singer’s falsetto feel even more like Freddie Mercury.

“Reapers” bounces between “Appetite for Destruction”-era metal and prog-rock guitar. The 10-minute epic “The Globalist” goes through sweet piano ballad moments as well as thrash metal riffs, as the narrator surveys the destruction he has wrought. There are moments in the power ballad “Aftermath” where it seems like Bellamy is going to bust out Shania Twain’s “From This Moment On.”

The title track is essentially an a cappella hymn that starts with the chanting of “Killed by drones” and ends with “Amen.”

Glenn Gamboa, Tribune News Service

FFS (Franz Ferdinand and Sparks)

Album: “Collaborations Don’t Work”

Grade: B+

In case there was any doubt what FFS — the supergroup built from new-new wavers Franz Ferdinand and new wave pioneers Sparks — would sound like, their eponymous debut album contains a handy, tongue-in-cheek suite of songs called “Collaborations Don’t Work.”

In true Sparks-ian fashion, FFS proves its own premise wrong by crafting stunning evidence of a collaboration that does work. The opening verse — “Mozart didn’t need a little hack to chart / Warhol didn’t need to ask de Kooning about art / Frank Lloyd Wright always ate a la carte / Wish I had been that smart” — is textually self-loathing and artistically triumphant. How meta is that?

The group camouflages all that cerebral tinkering with plenty of upbeat, new wave-inspired music. The first single, “Johnny Delusional,” works in a similarly clever way. The music is sleek, combining Franz Ferdinand’s stylish, guitar-driven pop with the dramatic synth riffs that marks Sparks work.

Sparks was formed in 1971 in Los Angeles and Franz Ferdinand arrived in 2004 from Glasgow, Scotland. They fit well together on “FFS” (Domino), as if they really were one band. The lyrical ideas reflect Sparks’ love of pushing the envelope, in songs like “The Man Without a Tan” and “Little Guy From the Suburbs,” while Franz Ferdinand’s fully formed band sound, which impressed rockers and hipsters alike with the breakthrough hit “Take Me Out,” gives those wild ideas a bit more heft.

Glenn Gamboa, Tribune News Service