Phoenix « The Listomania

15Mar/102

70. Air – Playground Love

Let’s go ahead and describe Air in five words. Let me see. Chill. Electronic. Pop. Uh, air-y. And French. I think those five descriptors pretty accurately represent what this band is about, and pretty much what they sound like. They’re very much a throwback act, referencing the history of French music, from touchstones like Serge Gainsbourg and Jean Michael Jarre (do yourself a favor- look him up) to up and coming Gauls like Phoenix. But their laid back, synthesizer cloud-puff songs prove to always do something new, something that hasn’t been done before.

Although their landmark 1998 album Moon Safari is undoubtedly their masterpiece, “Playground Love” from their score to the 2000 film The Virgin Suicides is their best known work. With it’s fluttering strings and chiming bell tones, the song fades in like an afternoon breeze at an outdoor café. The cooed vocals crawl lazily into the mix, double-tracked and muted. By the way, can you tell who that is singing? Give up. I’ll give you a hint – he sings a song whose name is quite similar to the name of this blog. Yup, the two bands are friends.

The cheesy saxophone aside, this is old-school art-house tension masquerading as tongue-in-cheek. At a criminally short three and a half minutes, “Playground Love” floats in like a message in a bottle from some Mediterranean beach jockeys, cigarette smoke and shades and a one-third full bottle of red wine. This song is possibly the most egregiously, well, European thing in the top 150. And with it’s cinematic sweeps and Gainsbourg-throwback melodies, it soothes and slinks like only the French know how.

Tagged as: French as Shit, Phoenix, Serge Gainsbourg References, Top Songs 2 Comments

4Feb/10Off

85. Phoenix – 1901

Not every rise is meteoric. We hear the story so much that I think people assume it's a much more common careeer trajectory than it is. The One-ders are the exception, not the reality. Most bands wallow around in a middling ground for years, mired by an inability to take that next step, cross over and become a nationally recognized band. The percentage of bands that take that step is miniscule. But this year, Phoenix didn't just take the step. They made a giant leap, a vault, a daredevil-over-the-Caeser's-fountains flight from that middling state to the Next Big Thing.

Phoenix released their debut album in 2000 after playing together for half a decade in France, and existed in the European music underground for 9 years, releasing three albums and consistently staying at the bottom end of a heap of foreign dance-pop dopplegangers. No matter that they were one of the best of the group, they were still a part of the dogpile. And although Pitchfork wrote about them and metacritic recognized them as a good to very good band, no one really cared. They were never going to really go anyplace. That is, until Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

The 2009 album dominates everything they've ever done. Dominates. Like, not even close. I'm not really even sure how this happened. You hear the same sounds, the same musical ideas, it's all the same members. But something is just different. The songs were always catchy, but these are insane, stick-in-your-brain until your last breath melodies, refrains that are meant to be screamed at the top of ones lungs, the licks are fresher, the beats are bouncier. This is like 'roids in baseball. Think of those pictures you've seen of young Barry Bonds vs. older Barry Bonds. Same thing.

And "1901" is the best of this new crop of songs. I don't feel like I need to talk about this at all. Maybe more so than any other song on this list, this track is instantly and insatiably catchy. I will point out, though, that I feel the real brilliance of the song lies in the seemless melding of classic '70s guitar strokes and 2025 electronics swooshes. The best part of any piece of music from 2009 is the upward synth push at 1:24. Seriously, put that at the beginning of any uptempo chorus ever written and you have the catchiest song of the year. Give any other band these sounds and these toe-tapping, head bobbing hooks, and you have their next step. And Phoenix's giant leap to one of the biggest indie bands in the world.