Phoenix

Le Retour des Hommes de Phoenix

French Indie Rockers Get Famous, Go "Bankrupt"

By Andrew Clayman
Published in The Nashville Scene, September 2013

There was never any reason to worry about Phoenix suffering the dreaded "sophomore slump" this year. In a clever bit of foresight, the French quartet sneakily released its actual sophomore album nearly a decade ago when nobody was looking (2004's Alphabetical), thus freeing them up to follow the mega-success of 2009's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix with no fear of a formulaic misstep. In fact, rather than reacting to the pressures of their newfound stardom, the band set to work on their latest (and fifth) album Bankrupt! by completely sequestering themselves from anything that might remind them of how popular they'd become.

"We really just cut ourselves off from the outside world," guitarist Christian Mazzalai tells the Scene. "We closed all the doors for two weeks. We didn't even see a movie or read the newspaper. ... If you go in trying to please someone else or do what they want — it's not good for your art to compromise."

Theoretically, "what people want" in this case would have been an obvious sequel to Wolfgang, which — led by the hit singles "1901" and "Lisztomania" — sold more than 10 times as many copies in the U.S. as Phoenix's first three albums combined. Lost in the band's supposedly overnight success, however, was the 10-year journey to get there, starting as young idealists emerging from the same Paris suburbs as Daft Punk and Air.

"We take it at as a gift that our success came gradually and slowly," Mazzalai says. "We were totally ready to guard ourselves from all the pressures that come along and not to be changed by it. What we love and have always done is to try to bring the same fresh attitude to our music as we did when we were teenagers playing in the basement. That's very important to us."

Just because success hasn't changed them, however, doesn't mean Phoenix isn't a changed band. It's not a consequence of playing Saturday Night Live or sharing a stage with R. Kelly at Coachella; it's a matter of getting older and wiser as musicians, including knowing when to be less old and less wise in how they approach it.

"When we were working on our first album [2000's United], we were looking for perfection — to make the perfect pop song," Mazzalai explains. "Now we've discovered the beauty of imperfection."

As evidenced by Bankrupt!, Phoenix skipped the easy road of Wolfgang 2 by creating a batch of synth-heavy, lyrically cryptic tracks that Mazzalai calls "more complex" than their earlier work and "constantly evolving."

Take for example Bankrupt! 's title track — a slow-burning, almost Philip Glass-esque keyboard experiment spliced with an acoustic ballad — which changed so much in Phoenix's summer live shows that Mazzalai barely recognizes the recorded version anymore.

Just on the flight back on the plane from the U.S. recently, they were playing the whole album on Air France," Mazzalai says. "And I never normally listen to my own music, but since I couldn't go anywhere, I decide to give it a try. So I just listened to that one song, "Bankrupt," and it sounded totally strange to me, like it was something done by another band. So, you know, I love that, when your songs have their own lives. After you release them, you don't control them anymore. And that's a relief. Because when you are doing the album, every night, in all of my dreams, there's a faint hint of those songs that's always there. So having them out there in the world is very helpful. I can get some rest now."

In all likelihood, Mazzalai and his bandmates — vocalist Thomas Mars, guitarist-keyboardist Laurent Brancowitz and bassist/keyboardist Deck d'Arcy — haven't had much rest since Bankrupt! hit the U.S. charts at a career-best No. 4 back in April. A long slate of massive festival gigs will finally give way to a more traditional tour this fall, though Mazzalai does suggest that something "very unique" is in store for this tour. When asked to elaborate, however, the Frenchman bites his tongue.

"I'm sorry, but I cannot reveal it."