Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is the fourth studio album by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand.

The album spawned six singles: "Right Action", "Love Illumination", "Evil Eye", "Bullet", "Fresh Strawberries", and "Stand on the Horizon".

[2][3][4] According to band drummer Paul Thomson, most of the material on the album had been written and demoed at Sausage Studio and Black Pudding.

I've always liked the lead character in Alasdair Gray's Lanark growing the hard scales to defend the soft inner-self from the world.

It's probably the most positive record we've made, and the band have been, yeah, the most optimistic we've been since before we had any encounter with the music industry... probably because we've been sort of keeping a low profile for a while and not talking about ourselves too much.

[2][3] All tracks on the album were written by Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy, with additional writing from Bob Hardy on "Right Action" and "The Universe Expanded" as well as Alexander Ragnew on "Bullet".

Kapranos also co-produced the majority of the album under the pseudonym "Prince House Rabbit",[1] with the exception of "Right Action" and "Treason!

The opening line to "Right Action" was inspired by a postcard Alex Kapranos had found in London, which featured the phrase "Come home, practically all is nearly forgiven".

[3][8] The guitar riff to "Love Illumination" was created by Kapranos and originally thought of as "too rocky" by Nick McCarthy, but he later claimed that he enjoyed playing it.

[3] For "Fresh Strawberries", the band called upon Roxanne Clifford of Veronica Falls to provide additional vocals for the song.

[3] The album originally intended to feature 11 songs, including "Scarlet & Blue" (also known as "Bring Me Your Love") which was often played during the band's 2012 tour.

[36] At Digital Spy, Adam Silverstein commends that "more often than not, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is this band sharpening their particular surefire indie to glittering distinction."

Commenting on the band's future, he says that the "half-sorry, half-bitter 'Goodbye Lovers & Friends' is probably not Franz Ferdinand's very last act, even if Kapranos proclaiming in the final seconds 'But this really is the end' would make one awesome blowout.

Club, Annie Zaleski wrote positively of the musical differences between many of this album's tracks compared to the band's prior work, adding: "Admittedly, these more nuanced Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action sounds aren't as easily accessible; it's much easier to gravitate toward more familiar raucous post-punk ('Bullet,' 'Right Action') or the Clash-reminiscent punk-funk of 'Evil Eye.'

"[39] Writing for Mojo, Victoria Segal says that "Franz Ferdinand remain in robust good health, athletic aesthetes who have yet to break their stride.

At Alternative Press, Reed Fischer called the title "resolute", and said that "fortunately, his cruelty translates into charming melodies here that almost excuse the long wait for them.

"[38] Conversely, Tim Stegall in The Austin Chronicle wrote: "[T]he satisfaction appears sonic alone: Not a song sticks.

"[45] Caleb Caldwell for Slant Magazine wrote: More or less the Scottish answer to American bands like Interpol and the Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, with their du-jour cool and deft combination of insular art flair and dance-floor populism, was hailed by British hype machine New Musical Express as the dawn of a new rock revolution.

Four years later, the zeitgeist may prefer its rock stars with suspenders and banjos, but Franz Ferdinand's Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is an unapologetically swaggering disco-rock album that refuses to overstay its welcome.

[7]All tracks are written by Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy, except where notedPersonnel adapted from album's liner notes.