I agree that Franz Ferdinand's success is explained at least partly by the fact that there hasn't been a great album out this year - one that everybody in the music world agrees on. But then again, I reckon the last such album was OK Computer, almost eight years ago, or maybe Is This It. And looking at diverse year-end lists, Franz Ferdinand comes preety close to those albums in terms of acclaim.

Modest Mouse should be #1 place or even first as Wilco didn't deserve the "Best Alternative Album" at the Grammys and Franz Ferdinand is a very good band but compared to Modest Mouse they are #2 compared to them. i mean the album starts and ends great as it has a very different step from the whole rock genre and focusing on what is their maint point... how music is an art and how it can be used to express their feelings both the physical and political and emotionally ideas of the world. And for that they should have been nominated "Best Alternative Album", "Best Rock Song", and even "Best Album of the Year" and "Best Music Video". I mean, yeah, Green Day's album was a very political one but its maninly about how teenagers ideas are towards the world and only about 4 or 5 songs are mainly political but the rest is about the lives of teens. As Good News for People who love bad news had a very strange but understanding message in the album when you finished it you start to think...

i have no idea how this thread got bumped (perhaps someone deleted their post?) but the fact that there is no mention of the arcade fire in this thread is really interesting.

Yeah, someone posted some spam in here for some reason.

That certainly seems odd Michael, considering Arcade Fire's enormous acclaim these days. But going back to that period, although Funeral was released in september 2004, I don't recall seeing it for sale as early as 2005. Don't know when this SPIN list was compiled, but I guess it dates from late 04/early '05. At that moment very few people had actually heard Funeral. Maybe it was initially only released in Canada or something...