And they're not feeling so young anymore, either. Gone is the sometimes-flimsy blue-eyed soul of their first two LPs, replaced with a glossier take on the uptick guitars and sampled snare snaps of 2006's brilliant It's Never Been Like That. Nearly 10 years on and this casually chic group has grown into something unique- Wolfgang isn't a tweaked Air record or a tweaked Strokes record as much as it's a Phoenix record.
Back then, the quartet was following a wave of Gallic cool led by friends Daft Punk and Air. "I feel too young," went the hook on Phoenix's innocent and bittersweet 2000 debut single. There are layers here- maybe too many layers for the biggest rooms. It'll also hit your gut if you listen hard enough. Sure: YouTube tells us this album will make a generation-spanning touchstone like The Breakfast Club that much better. He's getting better and more sophisticated as his band discards anything- an outro, a bridge, an extra hi-hat hit- that could be deemed superfluous. His isn't a self-congratulatory, indie-nerd triumph, though, i.e., Mars isn't being cryptic to be an asshole. They're a bona fide "should be bigger" band.īut, as their songs tighten into increasingly effective bursts of pop, Mars is breaking up his words and meanings into smaller and smaller fragments. Just listen to the invincible crescendo of Wolfgang's "Countdown"- especially that little Coldplay-esque piano twinkle about three and a half minutes in- and realize that these guys are a few Chris Martin-isms away from staggering ubiquity. And the issue of thematic directness is especially important to Phoenix- this is an established indie band writing songs about love that are armed with hooks primed for a mainstream embrace.
Mars keeps this treacherous divide in mind throughout Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and the rest of the record successfully avoids mush while keeping its beating heart intact. "So sentimental not sentimental, no!/ Romantic not disgusting yet," sings frontman Thomas Mars on opener "Lisztomania", sounding like a madman with two tiny creatures whispering into each ear. Much of the album's internal conflict is laid out in its first couple lines.
It's truly universal- everybody live, love, and die. While the album's 10 songs are arranged and executed with virtuoso pop-rock precision, they chronicle nothing but angst, confusion, disappointment, and despair.
Phoenix wolfgang amadeus phoenix full#
Whereas Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music represented all things respectable and classicist, Liszt was a Romantic hero full of flash Amadeus won eight Oscars, Lisztomania boasts lines like, "Your big ambition was to stick your working-class cock up a piece of high-class crumpet." With their fourth album, Phoenix reference both composers and hone in on an elusive target somewhere between Mozart's formal wonders and Listz's dramatic flair. In the movie, Daltrey plays Franz Liszt, the 19th century Hungarian pianist and composer known for his flamboyant playing style- hysterical women fought over his handkerchiefs at concerts more than a century before the Beatles. At one point in the schlocky 1975 musical comedy Lisztomania, Roger Daltrey whips out an absurdly large phallus and no less than five women simultaneously straddle it like a cannon.
0 kommentar(er)
