Phoenix came out with one of the best records of the year, bar none. The French band's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix breaks through a ceiling Thomas Mars and company have been trying to find a way through for quite a bit, now. Despite regular soundtrack appearances on shows like The O.C. and the kind of indie-pop cred that can usually take a band (like, say, The Arcade Fire) beyond hipster credibility, something about their previous three efforts didn't take hold with mainstream audiences. But critics and sales (breaking the Top 50 in nine countries) agree: they nailed it this time. They're selling out tours, hitting SNL, doing all the things successful indie bands do. And now they're releasing a series of demos from Wolfgang detailing the blueprints for one of this year's most cherished records. So what's the verdict?

The Wolfgang Diaries -- available on wax when you buy a special boxed set of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix -- is for serious Phoenix fans only, unfortunately. And not even them.

There're 48 tracks on the record, and "tracks" is the most apt way to describe them; the longest stretches out to a scant 2:14, and it's a very truncated, acoustic version of album single "Lisztomania." The shortest is some key-tapping called "Goldbergs," and it's ten seconds long. For musicians, sound engineers, or die-hards, the demos could be of some use, but for fans it's only listenable as an interesting document and not much else (though it could theoretically make for decent mixtape filler, like movie quotes or sound bites).

Again: disappointing! If fans are going to shell out extra cash and find a record player to listen to something like this, they should be rewarded with full demo versions of songs, acoustic takes, b-sides, and stuff you couldn't find anywhere else that you'd want to find in other places. We'll give Phoenix credit for comprehensiveness, but otherwise, we expect better next time.

Meanwhile, for those who do want to hear it? They're slowly leaking some of the tracklets through a "secret" viral site where you can enter a password ("concorde") and snag a few of them. The site's been up for a few months, though, so if you want the entire thing, some comprehensive Googling might point you to a full download.

Or we could just show you where we found them and, uh, didn't download them.