By Tom Lanham
photo by Antoine Wagner
T
he French alt-rock outfit Phoenix has
always made music its own idiosyn-
cratic way, with no apologies. Ever
since it broke through internationally with
its Grammy-winning fourth album, 2009’s
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – and smash hits
like “1901” and “Lisztomania” – the retro-
minded members have been amassing a
remarkable arsenal of ’70s-and-‘80s-vin-
tage keyboards and drum machines, like a
rickety Yamaha that keen-eyed vocalist
Thomas Mars spotted in a pawn shop in
his native Versailles. Through eBay, and for
a bargain-basement $17,000, he even
secured the dusty old mixing console orig-
inally used on Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It
was a Harrison 4032, and something he
foresaw as crucial to future records. He
was right.
Because now – four years after its last
Bankrupt! effort – Phoenix has returned
with Ti Amo, a vibrant, summery-sounding
surprise that’s so awash in rubbery, bubbly
synthesizer textures that it feels time-
warped in from the burn-baby-burn disco
era. No joke. From its opening “J-Boy”
anthem – which roils with so much cal-
liope-cheesy organ, it’s almost as if the car-
nival has come to town – through Chic-
funky thumpers like “Tutti Frutti,”
“Goodbye Soleil,” “Via Veneto,” and the
oscillating, falsetto-crooned “Fleur De
Lys,” it’s the feel-good album of the year.
And ironically, one that was written and
recorded during some of the darkest, most
turbulent times in France’s history.
Fortunately, Mars lives most of the year
in New York’s Greenwich Village with his
wife, film director Sofia Coppola, and their
two daughters, Romy and Cosima. But he
still acutely felt his homeland’s pain as it
fell prey to: Immigrant-inspired xenopho-
20 illinoisentertainer.com june 2017
bia; Consequent fear-mongering from far-
right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen
(thankfully just resoundingly defeated by
Emmanuel Macron); and a fusillade of
Nice/Bataclan/Charlie Hebdo terrorist
attacks that amped that fear to a fever
pitch. Currently, led by writers like Michel
Onfray, a movement called Declinism has
taken hold, fueled not only by its own
decadent descent, but practically wallows
in it. “I think that there is something about
French people and fate,” observes Mars,
40. “But to me, it’s just an excuse to explain
the sign of the times. So I don’t feel that’s a
real mindset – it’s the consequence of
something, not the cause but the symp-
tom.”
In 2013, Phoenix rented out the top
floor of a converted old Parisian opera
house, brought in all their unusual equip-
ment and treated it like a job, punching the
clock, 10 a.m to 6 p.m., every day, eventu-
ally recording hundreds of hours of inven-
tive music. “And when we were recording
this album, we saw the world changing,”
recalls Mars, who admits to being incredi-
bly relieved that Le Pen lost by such a tan-
gibly large margin. “Paris felt different –
you saw a real shift. And it’s a city that
never changes, never modernizes. But we
did see it change for the first time.” As an
uneasiness descended, locals grew edgier,
less trusting of outsiders, as in one of Mars’
favorite – and even more relevant – books,
Camus’s treatise The Stranger. Adding to
the malaise: All of Phoenix’s musical icons
died in 2016, from Prince to David Bowie
and Leonard Cohen. “All of these things
kept happening, until it felt like we were
moving,” he adds. “Moving towards
something else.”
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