Phoenix

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

(Glass Note)

US release date: 26 May 2009

UK release date: 25 May 2009

By Evan Sawdey

PopMatters Interviews Editor

It's Not a Miracle They Needed ...

cover art
 Amazon
 Lala

No matter what else happens over the course of 2009, Phoenix have undoubtedly scored the Comeback of the Year.

Back in 2000, this little-known group of Parisian lounge-rockers released a fantastic little disc called United, and though decidedly laid-back in vibe, this synth-happy quartet (fronted by Thomas Mars) had stumbled upon a unique vein of mid-tempo propulsion, mixing keyboards with peppy drum beats and Mars’ disaffected croon, resulting in minor pop masterpieces like the relentlessly optimistic bounce of “If I Ever Feel Better” and the giddy “Too Young”. The latter track wound up getting featured in the movie Lost in Translation, and by all means, it seemed like Phoenix were going to be pop’s “next big thing”.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to be the “next big thing” when each of your subsequent albums begin collapsing under the weight of their own style. Though 2004’s Alphabetical still featured some stunning moments (particularly the storming opener “Everything is Everything”), the group hadn’t really found a way to advance their sound, and, as such, Alphabetical felt a bit colder and distant than United did. They quickly followed that album with the horrid 2006 effort It’s Never Been Like That, which failed to garner much attention at all, largely due to the fact that the began stopped writing actual songs and instead released aural photocopies of “the Phoenix sound”. Suddenly, it seemed like the only thing Phoenix was going to be famous for was having a frontman that was the father of Sophia Coppola’s child.

So what a sigh of relief it is to hear Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix all the way through. Not only has the band managed to capture the vibrant energy that made United such a joy to listen to, but for the first time in a long time, it feels like Phoenix are actually ready to stick to their guns by sticking their necks out in public, utilizing all of the promotional mediums that they can to make sure everyone hears this album they’re extremely proud of, instead of just getting lucky and having one of their songs “discovered” on a soundtrack somewhere. On February 23rd of this year, people were invited to the Phoenix website to get an MP3 of lead single “1901”, and suddenly the band that everyone forgot about was on the forefront of everyone’s mind. The group immediately followed this with a triumphant appearance on Saturday Night Live, and now—after having Wolfgang available through digital retailers for almost a month—we see the cycle complete with the physical release of their first new album in three years.

Effortlessly capturing that late-night club cool that was notably absent from their last two discs, Wolfgang feels like a far more considered record than anything the band has done so far. Opening with the buoyant “Lisztomania” (arguably the best pop song ever written about a Ken Russell film), Mars makes hesitant statements about relationships that exist out of necessity than real romance (“ending this love for gentlemen only”, he intones), all while plunky key tones dance around him, Phoenix’s warm sound as full-bodied as ever. The stunning “1901”—with its stop-start guitar lurch and positively soaring chorus—might even be their finest song to date.

Yet as easy as it would be to embrace Wolfgang simply because the band has found their voice again (as some of us critics already have), none of this would matter if the band didn’t have the songs to back it up—and, amazingly, they do. Though “Countdown (Sick for the Big Sun)” is the weakest track on the album by far (read: not bad, just the most forgettable), every other song bristles with a vibrancy and energy all its own. The tremolo synth breakdown on “Rome”, for example, serves as the album’s true climax, where Mars drops out, the drums fire up, and the band sits back, takes a drag, and watches as the sweaty masses before them dance in sheer unbridled ecstasy.

There are lot of moments like that on Wolfgang, wherein the band stops everything to focus solely on one instrument, almost as a way of restarting the song mid-way through, lest it get boring. They pull this trick on “Girlfriend” (where things drop out just for the strummy electric riffs to build upon themselves), “Fences” (where Mars brings in his acoustic for a few blissful moments), and the epic two-part number “Love Like a Sunset”, where—after building layers upon layers of synths like an M83 song—everything blows away and is replaced by a simple two-chord guitar riff, the seven-minute running time of both pieces climaxing with about only 90 seconds of lyrics. Simply put, the band has learned how to build songs to proper climaxes now, and boy are they happy to show off that newfound skill.

There are just so many little gems to be found scaling all over Wolfgang (“Fences”, for example, is arguably the sexiest song the band has ever done), all given proper weight by Mars’ eternally lovelorn lyrics, often about fixing, building, or (in the case of the harpsichord-laden “Armistice”) compromising your way through a relationship. Mars cannot seem to find happiness wherever he goes, and when we get to “Lasso” and its central query of “Who ya runnin’ to / Could you go run to me?”, it almost deliberately echoes Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend”, wherein His Royal Badness (as Camille) asked “Would you run to me if somebody hurt you / Even if that somebody was me?”  Even as Prince proved to be an unquestioned expert on sexual politics, Thomas Mars is slowly showing us his mastery of the psychology of the courtship.

It’s fitting, then, that when Phoenix initially formed in 1999, the band would got their start by playing drunken Prince covers at karaoke bars before finally discovering their own sound. With Wolfgang, they’ve finally come into their own, releasing the strongest disc of their career without compromising a thing. Sure, it’d be easy to stonewall this album for being almost too lightweight and feel-good, but really—aside from Max Tundra’s Parallax Error Beheads You—it’s unlikely you’re going to find an album of equal effortless pop fun this year. Welcome back, Phoenix; we’ve been waiting for you.

— 27 May 2009

Phoenix - 1901
 
Bookmark and Share

Tagged as: phoenix
Comments

It’s a little infuriating when people who love this album knock <i>It’s Never Been Like That</i>. <i>Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix</i> is great, no question, but the whole reason it’s great is because it advances on what they did with <i>It’s Never Been Like That</i>, which was their first start-to-finish good album.  “1901,” this album’s finest song, is so transparently the same sort of song they only started writing with <i>INBLT</i> with some keyboard gloss that I genuinely don’t get how someone can love it and not like the album before it.

<i>WAP</i> is an interesting move forward, but it’s one that largely retains the core of their last album, and <i>that’s</i> why it’s so successful. Phoenix’s first two albums have the occasional good song, but they’re too dilettantish; with the last one they suddenly turned into a rock band and while in theory I wouldn’t have assumed that was a positive move it wound up suiting them perfectly.

Comment by Ian Mathers from Ontario, Canada — May 27, 2009 @ 8:25 am

Glad you like the album, Evan! I haven’t picked it up—paltry options of music stores in NYC, sad to say—but it’s on the list. I’m all for a feel-good Phoenix album and your review is definitely the match that needed to be lit for me to make that trek downtown.

Personally, I actually really liked It’s Never Been Like That. It was my introduction to the band and then I went back and discovered Untitled. Not sure what I would have felt if it were the reverse but I do find myself still enjoying “Long Distance Call” and “Consolation Prizes” as much now as three years ago.

Comment by Christian John Wikane from Hell's Kitchen, NYC — May 27, 2009 @ 9:59 am

Wait a second, who loves this album and doesn’t like INBLT? They’re not all that different. I will say this is a good step up though. Amazing album.

Comment by Jeff from San Diego — May 27, 2009 @ 10:25 am

I would have to strongly disagree with the suggestion in this review that “It’s Never Been Like That” was a poor album.  Many, including myself, consider it their finest and most consistent album up to that point.  The new album is great, but it’s not a “comeback” by any means.  It builds on what they had already accomplished.

Comment by pogopop77 — May 27, 2009 @ 10:41 am

What an absurd review, if only because of the comments re INBLT… has the reviewer listened to that record?  Is he from another planet where that isn’t universally recognized as Phoenix’s best pre-WAP effort and a classic of 2000’s alt rock?  No real songs?  That’s fucking ridiculous - with the exception of “North” every track on the record is a jewel.  Agree fully with Ian Mathers above re WAP building on INBLT - WAP advances on the oft-kilter pop-rock structures of INBLT and adds a kind of krautrocky electronica that has little to do with the loungey vibe of United (despite the same producer).  United, while full of great moments is by far the band’s least accomplished effort.  Where I do agree with the reviewer (and every other person who has heard it) is that WAP is an amazing record and easily Phoenix’s best record to date.  Anyway, this review pissed me off, notwithstanding the ultimate conclusion.  Also, should be more like a 9…

Comment by mtwill from USA — May 27, 2009 @ 12:46 pm

Oh, and Max Tundra is from last year and not anywhere near the same league as WAP.

Comment by mtwill from USA — May 27, 2009 @ 12:49 pm

I have to say I actually stopped reading the review after the words “Horrid 2006 effort” followed by “It’s Never Been Like That.” These two albums are both amazing and sound incredibly similar with great hooks. If anything, their earlier albums are the ones that are uneven.

Comment by Jason from Philadelphia — May 27, 2009 @ 12:50 pm

Hold on a second, though; except for the issue of how good It’s Never Been Like That is, where I (respectfully) disagree with Evan, this is a really good review.  I might have edged it to a 9 myself, but INBLT did get a bunch of bad reviews when it came out so if that section of the review was about a comeback in terms of support rather than quality, well, the rest of it is pretty much what I wanted to say about this album.

C’mon guys, we can differ on how much we like the older album without throwing the rest of what’s written here out, can’t we?

Comment by Ian Mathers from Ontario, Canada — May 27, 2009 @ 1:39 pm

— PopMatters sponsor —

I must say, I find this debate to be really fascinating.  I love seeing smart comments in these forums, so thanks everyone for contributing.

I will concede that perhaps I was a bit spoiled by UNITED, which I always viewed as the finest distillation of their sound.  I think it’s fair to say that ALPHABETICAL isn’t going to win any “best of their career” contests, but NEVER BEEN—despite the fact that it completely brought in their love of rhythm guitars to the forefront—is still amazingly lightweight; not in the sense that the stuff they were doing was “fluff” or anything like that, it just doesn’t have the same gravitas that WOLFGANG possesses.  Though sonically similar, the songs on WOLFGANG have muscle and bounce where NEVER BEEN feels like the band is just using a “Phoenix template”.  “Consolation Prizes” isn’t a bad song, but it’s framework is almost too slimplistic, so dry and brittle that it barely leaves room for any sort of groove (though, note, the likemindedly-constructed “Everything is Everything” has a certain fluidity despite its stop-start almost glitch-like feel).  Plus, NEVER BEEN has tracks like the demo-quality “Diet of the Heart”, which, really, would’ve best been kept in the vault.

So, yes, I agree with the comments that there are similarities between the two albums, but in terms of songwriting, it feels like a night and day contrast: the band moving from mere songwriters to genuine pop maestros.  I’m still a Phoenix fan through and through, this album just reignited a lot of what I loved about them in the first place.  So yeah, it’s a comeback, and, really, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving group.

Comment by Evan Sawdey from Salt Lake City — May 27, 2009 @ 1:47 pm

Uh, dude, there’s no track called “Diet of the Heart” (or anything close to it) on INBLT.  Nothing on wikipedia or discogs.org, so I’m really curious now.

And I’m sorry, but I still gotta disagree - “Lost and Found” and “Rally” et al are a hell of a lot less lightweight (sonically AND lyrically) than, say, “Too Young.”  Their first two records are intermittently good but overpraised and feel as synthetic and heartfelt as American cheese.

Honestly, my only slight reservation about WAP was that on first listen I felt it marked a retreat from the muscle and bounce of INBLT! It was their first album with any grit (again, sonically and lyrically/emotionally both) and the first one to really capitalize on Mars’ ability to evoke movingly disconnection and yearning.

I guess we just gotta agree to disagree.

Comment by Ian Mathers from Ontario, Canada — May 27, 2009 @ 2:51 pm

I gotta join the chorus of protest about the suggestion that INBLT is “horrid”.  I don’t hear much difference between the two albums, sonically speaking. 
And “Fences” is the only track I routinely skip on WAP… the sing-along chorus is a little too cheesy for my ears.

Nice review otherwise… but I reckon the word “horrid” was brought out for its shock value… you don’t really mean it ;)

Comment by Greg from Vancouver, Canada — May 27, 2009 @ 6:48 pm

Some of us would call It’s Never Been Like That a wonderfully cohesive, shamefully underappreciated pop masterpiece.

And then there are those who would call it horrid.

WHATEVER

Comment by Doug — May 27, 2009 @ 7:32 pm

<<<And then there are those who would call it horrid.

WHATEVER>>>

That’s sorta the point of a talkback forum… if you were truly indifferent, you wouldn’t have posted! ;)

Comment by Greg from Vancouver, Canada — May 27, 2009 @ 9:48 pm

Maybe I’m the only one who really likes ‘Alphabetical’. I always thought it was a unique blending of RnB sounds (Prince, Michael Jackson) with indie rock aesthetic. When they put that D’Angelo track on their Kitsune compilation, all the pieces fell into place.

I see ‘United’ as a statement that Phoenix will do whatever they want which they continued to do by making an RnB album (Alphabetical), a garage rock album (It’s Never Been Like That) and a dance/electronic music (Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix). That they don’t really fit any of those genres and have a discernible ‘Phoenix sound’ is even better.

Comment by Brad N from Melbourne, Australia — May 28, 2009 @ 4:25 am

I am in complete agreement with the 1st commenter, Ian Mathers, concerning the reviews ridiculous assertion that “It’s Never Been Like That” is horrid. 

To me, and a large percentage of Phoenix fans, it is their best album and I absolutely ADORE “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”.  Ian Mathers is spot on in saying that “WAP” is essentially an extension of “INBLT”.  It is perfectly acceptable for the reviewer to not have liked “INBLT”, but to dismiss the album in that manner (and also knock the songwriting—it contains probably their most honest, direct lyrics and the songwriting isn’t really all that different from “WAP”) and not give it credit for being a vital stepping stone in their evolution to creating “WAP” is completely unfair.

Also about “Diet of the Heart”, I believe it was a bonus track if you bought the album on iTunes it’s not officially on “INBLT”.

Comment by Nikolai from everywhere — May 28, 2009 @ 9:44 am

Um, Ewan, I would say this is less a debate and more of a pile-on with every single post in the forum taking issue with the absurd assertion that INBLT is a “horrid” record.  Ian Mathers tried admirably to be charitable (as is his usual gracious style) but the reality is the central thesis of your review is that Alphabetical and INBLT were so bad that WAP can only be viewed a “comeback”, like we’re talking about Eminem or Mike Tyson or something.  Its just such a dumb proposition that its very difficult to take anything else in the review seriously.  Nikolai nails it in the review above - its one thing to have an outlier opinion (everyone’s entitled obviously) but to write and publish a review while being so ignorant about a band, their history and the general critical consensus is just embarassing.  As for the nits - not realizing “Diet” basically is a demo, thinking Mars plays guitar on the record, calling the Max Tundra record a contender for best pop album of 2009, etc. - PopMatters, you need to start editing this dude.

WAP is a great record and Phoenix’s best, although I fully agree with the consensus on this board that it is really just a development of INBLT.  United is by far the weakest album musically, lyrically and some of it is frankly weak.  Alphabetical was a marked improvement, but INBLT was a quantum leap forward for the band.  As I said in my first post, there is near universal recognition of that point among fans of the band, which is why this review comes off as so misguided and frankly silly.

Comment by mtwill from USA — May 28, 2009 @ 2:09 pm

— PopMatters sponsor —

“They quickly followed that album with the horrid 2006 effort It’s Never Been Like That, which failed to garner much attention at all, largely due to the fact that the began stopped writing actual songs and instead released aural photocopies of “the Phoenix sound”.”

Most people focused on the word “horrid” in this sentence, but that is not the problem.  Horrid is an opinion, subjective.  The problem is sloppy research about the “objective” aspects of this sentence.  INBLT garnered a lot of critical attention, and if you asked most critics, the majority would probably rank it as Phoenix’s most consistent and best album.  Also, as pretty much EVERY review of INBLT acknowledged at the time, Phoenix had basically abandoned its old style in favor of a more muscular, jangly-guitar, Strokes-y sound - so it’s impossible to just out-and-out state that the album coasts on any previously-established “Phoenix” sound.

If you think it’s horrid, fine.  But this is sloppy, sloppy research/writing.

Comment by mike — June 23, 2009 @ 12:32 pm

Add a comment

Please enter your name and a valid email address. Your email address will not be displayed. It is required only to prevent comment spam.

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?