Phoenix communicatingmusically

Tue 2nd Jan, 2007 in Features

Sure, Phoenix’s rugged looking, trench coat sporting guitarist, Christian (Mazzalai,on the phone from his apartment in Paris) is French – as are all four members of the band. Why then, one might well ask, did I enthusiastically prepare an interview’s worth of convoluted, testing, probing questions for this poor man who was already struggling with his second language and with a pretty limited vocabulary?

See, despite writing and singing in his second language, singer Thomas Mars’ entirely English lyrics are incredibly literate and incisive, maintaining that distinctive, quasi-philosophical, typically French means of articulation. Thus, I thought it was a fair assumption that the guitarist would be similarly proficient in the English language; I was wrong. So kids, here’s the hot tip: if they’re not completely fluent, keep it simple!

Anyway, enough about that – Phoenix are set to hit our shores this year for Australia’s first ever V Festival! I say Chris’s vocabulary was somewhat limited, and thus most of his responses were quite brief, but anything he did say was said eloquently.  “Australia is a darkened forest,” he tells me at one point, without any further explanation – none was required really. “Darkened forest” encapsulates all that Australia means to Chris: an enigmatic country at the other end of the earth, one which he is yet to explore.

Chris and his band mates are certainly not averse to exploration, as evidenced by the process (or lack thereof) they undertook in recording their most recent album. Not a note had been written for It’s Never Been Like That prior to the band entering the studio, a courageous move indeed, but is this the general Phoenix modus operandi? “No it’s quite the opposite as we used to do. Usually we love to control everything so we take time and we do lots of takes and the songs grow very slowly but surely. This time we wanted the opposite, super fast, with no control at all.”

Again, with another of his archetypal French artiste phrases, Chris describes It’s Never Been Like That as the band’s “teenage blood,” and again, he offers no further explanation of this abstraction until prompted, as if it were self explanatory (clearly we Australian folk aren’t as acquainted with eloquence). “It’s excited, a direct record, we talk about our life in 2005, which was a teenage life- we were on tour all the year…It’s about freedom, excitation, frustration, being far away from home…The only concept we has was not to control it, because we discovered the future for us was at least to do that once – to discover the beauty of imperfection, and discover the beauty of truth. It was good because it was a selfish process, we needed to do it for our souls you know? We think that’s if it’s good for us it may be good for somebody else.”

Whatever they did for their souls has certainly been doing it for my ears of late and I’m not alone. Napoleon Says, Consolation Prizes, and yell along single Long Distance Call have been ripping airwaves and dance floors nationwide in the latter half of this year. And, as afore mentioned, Phoenix’s steadily rising profile in Australia looks set to gain an unprecedented amount of attention on account of their slot in V Festival in March (what a fantastic line-up, seriously…The Pixies, Phoenix, Gnarles Barkley...) However, beyond our indie friendly borders, there do exist a number of very nationalistic French men and women who strongly object to fact that the band’s lyrics are exclusively in English. “We are like black sheep – France is a very nationalistic country. We had a very strong fan base but it was more underground, but now it’s bigger. In France they thought we were arrogant.”

Far from being arrogant, Chris is a polite, sensitive young Frenchman with a very alluring accent. He is also wary of being pigeonholed in any respect, and cites the stylistic and scene-related contradictions present in the band’s sound as a disclaimer of sorts. “We sing in English but we feel our songs are very French, we only talk about Paris. We are successful but in an underground way, we are in between, we like to feel in no place…there is no pressure.”

The only pressure, maybe, will be that which fans and critics will put on Phoenix to successfully follow up the indisputable pop gem that is It’s Never Been Like What. Regrettably, dear readers, we may well have to wait until early 2008 for the next instalment of Phoenix, but with Chris hinting at both a new direction (again) and, perhaps, some French lyrics, there is certainly plenty to look forward to.

Catch Phoenix at the V Festival  – for full details click here
Phoenix will also play at the Best of V Festival in Melbourne and Adelaide for details click here