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Jan 10, 2025There’s a long-absent freshness to the first few songs, which simply fizz with ideas: The Doctor possesses a manic energy; the standout Hooked deserves to fill dancefloors. But that early charge isn’t sustained and there’s a distinct sag to the middle of The Human Fear.
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Jan 10, 2025It’s not bad, sometimes it’s even very good, but it ought to feel much more significant than this.
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Jan 14, 2025At this point, for better or worse, this is what we can expect from the band: shades of what came before, a glint of the glory days, and a workmanlike determination to soldier on. Kapranos admitting he’s got the fear, it seems, doesn’t change too much.
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Feb 5, 2025This patchy work frequently flirts with brilliance, momentarily engaging with excellence before returning to the meandering rhythms that make up the finished set.
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Jan 13, 2025There are jaunty little stabs at the band’s earlier post-punk revival sound, but even these are more of a pedestrian shuffle than an exuberant rush. Audacious is pleasant enough in a toe-tapping kind of way, but it’s still something of a misnomer. Elsewhere, the harder Kapranos flails around trying to recapture the magic of old, the more desperate and sad The Human Fear sounds.
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Jan 3, 2025If Franz Ferdinand were the grownups back then [in 2004], 20 years on they’re positively avuncular. The Human Fear – their sixth album, and first since 2018 – feels markedly middle-aged in tone.