In 2000, Phoenix’s first album release, UNITED, blazed across the musical skies like a newly discovered comet. Paris, London, Dublin, New York and Detroit were all captivated, with everyone heaping praise on them, name-checking them as influences. And with good cause: great composition, great performances, great production and attention to detail, combined with the unanswerable success of the album’s singles, Too Young, Funky Squaredance and If I Ever Feel Better. Buyers and critics were unanimous in hailing a brilliant début.
For ALPHABETICAL, Phoenix’s four members – Thomas Mars, Christian Mazzalai, Laurent Brancowitz and Deck d’Arcy – closeted themselves away in their studio, determined to create a recording at once more complete and more personal than UNITED. They operated as a true collective, a symbiosis in which each member was equally responsible for the lyrics, music, performance, arrangements and production. They were adamant that, at every stage of the album’s production, they do their utmost to retain their artistic signature, even if it meant allowing certain imperfections and accidents to make it into the final mix. Speaking of which, American Tony Hoffer was brought on board to add his technical prowess to the final mixing – he was able to add a new dimension to the group’s already highly polished production.
The album opens with a bang: Everything Is Everything is the happy lovechild of a radical beat and brilliant songwriting. Phoenix have once again given birth to a mutant, drawing on a range of disparate influences to create an idiom that is both coherent and profoundly original. What can you say about a track like Run, Run, Run, a highly improbable collision between folk guitar and a pounding hip hop beat? Phoenix have the knack of flawlessly unifying the seemingly incompatible – it’s never artificial, never labored. I’m An Actor ushers in a radical change of tone: a monologue from the mouth of an actor drunk on power that progressively becomes a furious, megalomaniacal rant. Jagged guitars, off-beat rhythms, all conjure up a sense of imbalance. The atmosphere is heavy, the sense of uneasiness immediately palpable. Every break, every silence, each new element turns up the intensity of the dramatic pressure until, right at the end, the apotheosis comes in the from of a deluge of powerful chorals – a form not previously used by Phoenix – that lends the track an undeniably epic, even heroic, dimension.
ALPHABETICAL is a very complete, uncompromising work. It’s modern yet timeless, pluralist yet singular, elaborate but never labored. It is a work of nuance and subtlety that never crosses the line into affectation and superficiality; a work of remarkable diversity and coherence. Phoenix have a rare mastery of the lyric, words entwining themselves around and within, yet always at the service of the song.
“We took a lot of trouble to make sure that the lyrics were honest and the emotions true, even at the risk of sometimes painful introspection. We wanted to avoid losing focus, the sort of ‘catalogue of styles’ thing. So we ended up being very selective both in choosing and arranging the tracks. We tried to free ourselves of everything artificial, preferring unmediated energy and total honesty in performance. But by the same token we wanted the work to remain supple, sophisticated and above all really unique and celebratory; when it comes down to it, the only thing that you want to happen once people have listened all the way through is for them to listen to the whole thing again!”
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