More than 10 years needed this quartet of Versailles to get that when the word Phoenix was heard it was synonymous with good music, and not just the capital of the state of Arizona. Not as many as the 500 years it takes the mythological bird of the same name to become ashes, but like her, have been able to reborn in all its glory the alternative rock in France, a genre that no other French group had been able to Master as well as them. The great Bill Murray was not wrong when in his memorable speech when he handed over a prize to Sofia Coppola, wife and mother of the two daughters of the group's singer, he described him as "the only French in history capable of making rock".
Phoenix is formed by: Thomas Mars (voice), Deck D'Arcy (bass), Chris Mazzalai (guitar) and Laurent Brancowitz (second guitar, and Mazzalai's brother, although they do not share a surname because Laurent decided to use his mother's German surname).
The adventure began back in 1995, in the historic residential neighborhood of Versailles, outside of Paris, where the members of the group had grown up together. As teenagers they felt like outcasts in a neighborhood made up of great Catholic families with many children. The idea of teenage rebellion seemed very far away in that context, as they listened to The Cure and The Jesus and Mary Chain, which they replaced with styles they had not tried before, such as Madonna, Beck, or the Beastie Boys.
Phoenix was born as a garage band, which Mars, D'Arcy and Mazzalai had been forging playing in the singer's house. At that time they did not even contemplate the idea of dedicating themselves to it professionally. It seemed an unattainable goal. But the incorporation of Brancowitz gave a 180 degree cry to the trajectory of those young people. Mazzalai's brother was older than them, and had already had another group, Darlin ', with nothing more and nothing less than Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, or what is the same, the two components of Daft Punk . In fact, the name of this legendary duo came from the time when Brancowitz was still with them, when a journalist described his music as "punk ridiculous" (daft punk in English). With the arrival of Brancowitz, after a couple of small concerts and a hard work of composition, they released 500 copies of their first single, through their own label: Ghettoblaster. The Versailles had just taken off.
Phoenix performed, fortunately (for them, and for us), a series of concerts and appearances on television in the UK as support act for Air. Another duo, coincidentally also from Versailles, who, like Daft Punk, has taken French electronic music to world fame. In 1999, the then debutante, had only made two short films, Sofia Coppola, asked the French to take charge of the soundtrack of his melancholic and fascinating The Virgin Suicides, adaptation of the novel of the same name that Jeffrey Eugenides wrote in 93. The daughter of Francis Ford has shown an excellent musical taste, something that has become a hallmark of her filmography, together with the images of excellent visual quality, contributing with all this to create a dreamlike atmosphere. And nobody better knows about imagination and dreams, than the duo formed by Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. Among a series of instrumental wonders, highlights the main theme of the film: "Playground Love".
This work, turned into a classic of the 90, counted to interpret its puberscente letter with the young singer Thomas Mars, to whom it had just known the pair. Strangely, Mars decided not to appear in the credits of the album with his real name, but with a pseudónimo: Gordon Tracks. This would be the first collaboration between Mars and Coppola, in the soundtrack of a film by the director. Sweet irony that, since 2011 is his wife but, that same year they met and worked together for the first time, she married the director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are), with whom She was married until 2003. Thomas Mars even made a cameo in the film, appearing among the dance attendees at the institute.
It was the year 2000 when we finally enjoyed their debut, United, an album that contains two of the most catchy, and most radiated songs of the group: "Too Young" and "If I Ever Feel Better" (click to listen).
Like these two great singles, the whole album is built on rhythms of punk style (like its overture) and funk, reminiscent of the 70s, which is totally present in the original "Funky Squaredance", seasoned with riffs from the alternative rock that began to be forged with the arrival of the new millennium, and with which Thomas Mars directed us with his voice towards the dance floor.
And is that, who has not wanted to dance to hear the "Can not you hear it calling, everybody's dancin 'oh yeah ... I feel too young" by Too Young, or the stanzas full of swagger of If I Ever Feel Better? The video clip of Funky Squaredance (click to see) was directed by Roman Coppola, Sofia's brother, and director of video clips by artists such as Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim, Moby, The Strokes, or Arctic Monkeys.
In 2003, Sofia Coppola would count again with the musical collaboration of Thomas Mars. "Too Young" was part of the soundtrack of his second film, the critically acclaimed (Oscar for best original script included) Lost In Translation. Air, again, they took care of some of the instrumental songs, and formed along with Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) the perfect tandem to give this film one of the best soundtracks in history, which also has the classic " Just Like Honey "by Jesus and Mary Chain in their memorable final.
In April 2011, two years before the release of their new album, Phoenix already warned. His new job was not going to be, as Mars joked, a Ludwing Van Phoenix. They wanted to preserve some of their pop, but experiment with new lines of sound. "Experimental" is, in fact, the word they used to refer to the material they were working on. But as much as they warned, it seems that most expected to hear a second volume of his previous work.
Knowing your path, Bankrupt! It is not a disappointment, much less, but a cocktail of many of the sounds that have familiarized us throughout his career. So here last minute laments from fans are not worth it. If you really like what Phoenix represents, and even if the Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix songs are your group favorites, you will also find in that latest album that magic formula with which they have made us feel fond of them.
Of course, there has been a barrage of criticisms that have simply been limited to commenting on what we already knew, what the group had repeated ad nauseam, but there have also been minds that see beyond, and have appreciated, that although Bankrupt ! do not live up to his predecessor as a set of themes, he still has jewels that should not be despised, and for which it is worth listening to again and again.
Like his lyrics full of small ironies, stories of bourgeois life, adolescence, love, lack of love, accompanying that cheerful and festive sound, which makes these four French forever. And it seems that years do not go through them, little physically, but especially in spirit. With these premises, we find songs like "SOS in Bel Air", which moves in the energetic line of the drum beat of tracks like "Lasso"; or "Trying to be cool", full of disco attitude, sensual and elegant, like the singles of his debut, and that is one of our new favorites. In the second half of the album, which perhaps some have been lost, the best Phoenix returns. The song that gives title to the album, "Bankrupt!" - and that we already know that, following the tradition, will be part of The Bling Ring the new film of Sofia Coppola -, is another one of those instrumental "tunnels", to which the The group has taken so much pleasure, and that would undoubtedly be the perfect companion for a midnight escape, from Marseille to Paris, as did Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) in À Bout de Souffle. In the last minutes of the song appears the voice of Mars, enclosing a pleasant melancholy, that accompany the guitars, and that seems to indicate that we have reached our destination.
After this sound trip, there are two tracks, "Drakkar Noir" and "Chloroform", in which they return to make clear their mastery of synthesizers combined with rock instruments, and that without a doubt, they are among the most danceable of the album, like that great "1901". And reaffirming that experimentation has paid off, we find ourselves with "Bourgeois". You have to experience their overwhelming change of pace, as the song grows with an initial keyboard melody reminiscent of the magic of the end of "Love Like a Sunset", and the voice of Thomas Mars gets under our skin. A revolution of sensations also favored by the sweet guitars that accompany it.
We hope not to take long to see them presenting this album, and the best of their repertoire, live (do not forget that they will be at Primavera Sound). And we can only ask them to continue opening their mind to new sounds, as they have done during their almost 20-year career, and let us enjoy the result.
