Fresh from the flames of disco (United - Phoenix)

Member Name: hulahoop

Product:	United - Phoenix
Date:	14/04/01 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: GREAT GREAT GREAT

Disadvantages: Well, you might not like it, but then you might not like chocolate

This band first caught my eye on Jools Holland, with the lead singer dressed up in his bright-tie garb and being particularly great. I can’t remember what they were performing, but most likely it was ‘Too Young’.

I had great expectations of this album, and I was disappointed at first, only to completely fall in love with it a few listens later.

Phoenix come under that Euro pop thing that covers bands like Air, Daft Punk, Les Rythmes Digitales and Soulwax, but don’t really sound all that similar. Well maybe a little. They are French!

They’ve all got great names. Deck D’Arcy provides bass, Laurent Brancowitz guitars, along with his brother Christian Mazzalai, and Thomas Mars Jr. gives us vocals. Although they are pretty much the only recurring artists throughout the album they make the most of loads of other artists, from Sandrine Longuet, who plays harp melodically on ‘Honeymoon’ to Camille Baz Baz who plays Hammond organ on ‘On Fire’. As I said, great names! Deck even does a bit of string section conducting on ‘If I ever feel better’.

Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk gives a helping hand, as does Philipe Zdar from Cassius.

The combination is pretty varied. They’ve managed to fit quite a lot onto a relatively short album. ‘School’s Rules’, ‘Too Young’ and ‘If I ever feel better’ give us a bit of disco funk, which embraces all that is cheesy and slick about dance music of previous years, but doesn’t take it too seriously.

‘School’s Rules’ is a short introduction to the LP and is an upbeat disco-plus-guitar-rock, drum machine affair, that gives the album a kind of ‘glam’ appeal. It builds happily up to ‘Too Young’ which is very polished and quite synthetic- sounding. With Deck’s sleek European-speaking-in-an-American-accent vocals it really re
minds me of early 80’s disco pop and sounds great for not being ashamed of this!

‘Honeymoon’ was certainly not what I expected of the album, being intensely calm and having the feel of a great love song (!) but with a twist of lyrics that don’t quite feel so safe. Of course this must be the romantic francaise coming out, non?!

I love this song. The harp is layered subtly with the guitars, drums, organs and other percussion, but with a depth which just makes you go aaaaaaa.........

It seems a bit strange to put it between ‘Too Young’ and ‘If I ever feel better’, both being upbeat, the latter certainly waking you out of any lovey dream world. You just have to get up and wiggle your hips around, moving like the woman in the Shake’n’vac advert. The bass and guitar, bubbling beneath the surface of this song, make it for me, along with Deck’s harmonised vocals. He also does that fitting-too-many-words-in-one-line thing, and sounds sexy in a kitsch way!

Well, I think those are my favourite songs out of the way! The rest of the album sounds a little more conventional in parts - again, not what I expected.

‘Party Time’ is a quite heavy guitar track with distorted vocals, and reminds me of bands like Soulwax who hark back to rock, while playing with disco. There’s this bit in ‘Party Time’ which sounds just like the guitar riff in the Manic Street Preacher’s ‘Removables’, speeded up. I can’t seem to get away from that, which irritates me.

‘On Fire’ could almost be some mass-produced R’n’B pop mix in the charts, with diva-esque backing vocals from Julia and Oliza (whoever they are. Once again - Julia, the best name ever! ;O) ) But they manage to pull it off and the overall result is fabulous. The repetition of ‘Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright, alright, alrig
ht, alright,’ could sound far worse! These vocal bits are superceded by strings and trumpet, giving it a pretty different feel. And then comes more that could be cheese, but of a different kind - perhaps a little gorgonzola. The saxophone is fairly reminiscent of bad jazz, but reminds me of the bands French routes and adds to the song as another layer. These different components are layered up and used in a variety of sequences.

‘Summer Days’ starts like some children's programme or 70’s sit com theme tune with Rob on the Clavinet. Why thanks Rob! Next comes slide guitar and a Yamaha cs-60 Synthesiser (thats what it says in the sleeve!) This is quite a happy-go-lucky summer song that talks about truffles and driving in the summer holidays. It goes pretty will with ‘Funky Squaredance’ which starts with an irksome mechanised voice [I've had enough of all that Daft Punk 'One More Time' stuff] and country & western guitar, and a slightly too nicey nicey melody. The lyrics are pretty intriguing on this track though.

‘Funky Squaredance’ is divided into three parts, the first being as above, the second has some screams from D’Arcy’s mother’s ‘the Love Choral Society’ and develops into a funky dance theme more like the tracks at the beginning of the album. It then repeats ‘Funky squaredance’ over again with a sampled track used in between. This is notable, but it is a little bit of a shame that its stuck between the two other parts. The third part is the heavy guitars again, the total sum of the parts being a showcase of Phoenix’s interest in, and dabblings with, different types of music. Overall its a pretty interesting song.

‘Definitive Break’ provides an outro similar to ‘School’s Rules’, but slower and darker.

The whole package is pretty varied with a bizarre sleeve cover which sums up the bands
obvious fascination with all things pop - whether its your heavy metal idea of pop, or the fifties squeaky clean thing.

This is a great album. It may take a while to get used to it as a whole, but its diversities give it a lot.

Summary: