“We’re one of these bands that are always gonna sound the same, no matter what we do,” Franz Ferdinand front man Alex Kapranos told British radio station XFM last February.

After listening to the Scottish band’s third album, “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand,” that — for better or worse — has never been so clear.

After deliberating over the music for “Tonight” for nearly three years, a more electronic feel envelops the new album, most likely in self- conscious response to fears that their signature sound will become irrelevant.

They’re still the same angular band that paved the way for others heavily influenced by new wave (not to mention the Gang of Four reunion), but less interesting.

The cover of “Tonight” tells all. The band members are posed in a faux crime scene photo, a la Weegee’s of 1940s New York City.

The situation — featuring a man flat on his back, with two others tending to him and another blocking the camera — looks like the result of a night out at a posh club gone awry.

Coincidentally, this is an askew soundtrack for a posh club.

A big problem with “Tonight” lies in the pacing. “Twilight Omens” opens with a filtered keyboard that sounds like a crime drama’s theme song, but then, like most songs on the album, a brilliant caper does not unfurl, but merely happens.

Songs don’t evolve; they jerk from one section to the next in a fashion so violent a fighter pilot would get motion sickness.

Even transitions from song to song lack rhythm. With only one longer than 4 minutes, by the time you get a feel for one track, you’re on to the next.

Even the strongest tracks fail to say anything unique.

The lyrical content of the incredibly catchy lead single “Ulysses” seems composed entirely of someone saying “Let’s get high” and chants of “la, la-la-la-la.”

“Lucid Dreams” is perhaps the least disjunctive, but seems to end before launching into a 3-minute acid-trance break that’s not half bad, but extremely inconsistent with the rest of the album.

Only on “No You Girls” does Franz get it right. It’s closest to the stomp-and-chant choruses of the debut, repeating “no, you girls never know/how you make a boy feel” amid half-whispered, mischievous banter about cigarettes, kisses and a flirtatious avoidance of eye contact, presumably in a dark and sexy locale.

While Franz Ferdinand has stumbled with “Tonight,” they still have a pulse, though it’s beating slowly.

But if U2 and Weezer can release “Zooropa” and “Maladroit,” respectively, before returning to form, we’ll still give Franz Ferdinand’s next album a fair chance before declaring them self-parodic.

2/5 Pitchforks

Reach the reporter at ryan.oneal@asu.edu.