Franz Ferdinand "Franz Ferdinand" [2004]

The last possible existing combination -- garage guitars with disco beats -- proves beyond a shadow of a doubt it should have never been explored by anyone, let alone Franz Ferdinand on their debut. Caught in an uncomfortable limbo between dancing and rocking, British kids of the mid-Aughts I'm sure were just as clueless as those of us who thought we were listening to the The Strokes the first seven times we heard "Take Me Out." Further complicating this band's alchemy is snooty lounge-lizard lead singer Alex Kapranos, whose impact is similar to finding a slice of gruyere in your box of Cracker Jacks. How these pub-gig rats find anything to be snooty about is unclear but probably totally unwarranted -- nothing new there in re UK sentiment. Being less dysfunctional than the Libertines isn't anything to be especially proud of. Oh, maybe it's that they have a superior working knowledge of 20th century history than the Ramones did? Yeah, no extra points there, either.