Franz Ferdinand- Franz Ferdinand (2004)

I first heard of this band in the pags of the NME- remember that? 2004 wasn't that long ago, but it feels as though it was in the midst of an age where music was curated by the music press and things could never be otherwise. In fact, it was an age that would not really outlast the decade, but it certainly didn't feel like that in 2004 despite Melody Maker having already rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.

I had long hair then and have long hair now, and have always identified as being a sort of metalhead and sort-of post-punk type, albeit with omnivorous tastes. But by 2001-ish I'd abandoned Kerrang!- it was getting too tabloidy for me, and I just didn't like all these yelping post-punk bands with prominent rhythm guitars and still don't- and turned more often to the NME, which in the wake of the Strokes was full of indie bands (by the '00s definition) which looked askance at Coldplay, landfill indie and such dreariness and instead turned to influences such as Wire and Devo, roducing gloriously weird stuff before fizzling out; indie music had sort of become dreary again by 2007 or so, and has mainly remained so ever since.

But this album... how glorious, how weird and yet how addictive. It's song structures are often odd yet it's full of top tunes, spawning a huge number of singles and yet the best song on here- "Auf Achse"- isn't even a single. Let this album stand as the utimte symbol of an age when indie music was actually exciting.