Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

The title is a Mozart pun; Mars called it almost like a childish thing, and his mother is German. EQ Magazine's Patrick Sisson reports the band worked in Philippe Zdar's Montmartre studio for nearly a year and a half, designed by Tom Hidley in the early 1980s, recorded over 14 hours of music, used Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards and mixed on an SSL 4000 E; the infobox says Motorbass and the album text says Zdar's home studio, so the location is contested. Zdar produced and mixed, and played drums on "Fences", while Hedlund played most of the rest. Singles were "1901" (February 23, 2009), "Lisztomania", "Lasso", "Fences" and "Armistice".

It reached 37 on the Billboard 200 and 4 on Alternative, and is RIAA gold at 721,000 as of April 2013. Metacritic gives 82; Pitchfork gave 8.5, AllMusic 4.5 stars, Rolling Stone 4 and the Guardian 3. It was number one on the A.V. Club's and Drowned in Sound's lists for 2009 and number two in the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop; "Lisztomania" was fourth and "1901" 13th in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2009.