Smoldering Musical Discourse, Rising from the Ashes

For such a shy bunch of fellas, French band Phoenix sure has been getting around. Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, and Lourne Michaels have all welcomed the quartet into their studios, offering them the national exposure their slow-burn career (the guys have been together for over 10 years now) has heretofore lacked. While this recent introduction to the mainstream speaks to the accessibility of their genre-spanning pop tunes, a series of recent audio and visual releases by the band highlights their passion for fostering a discourse on a staggeringly broad range of music. In doing so, it exposes the underlying complexity of Phoenix’s seemingly simple pop songs.

“Tabloid by Phoenix,” released earlier this year by painfully Parisian record-label-cum-design-house Kitsuné, is the first of these releases. Described by the band as a group of “little treasures that have had this huge impact and amazed us,” the collection is as much a straightforward mixtape as it is a full disclosure of their tastes and influences. The individual value of each of the 20 tracks on “Tabloid” is apparent to the listener—both in terms of their musical and emotional significance—as a testament to the group’s careful song selection as well as an inspired sequencing of tracks. That much of the offering centers around mid- to late-century rock and soul music is no surprise for a group that got their start playing Hank Williams and Prince covers in bars.

A number of the songs on “Tabloid” are taken from white artists as profoundly influenced by black music as Phoenix has been. Selected gems from these singers and songwriters—Elvis Costello, Dusty Springfield, Lou Reed, the Dirty Projectors, to name a few—are paired with songs by preceding, contemporaneous, and succeeding black artists—The Impressions, D’Angelo. For Phoenix, stylistic connections trump relations of chronology or influence. Placing Elvis Costello’s schmaltzy, intricate “Shipbuilding,” just before D’Angelo’s wholly different, yet still schmaltzy and intricate “Send It On” emphasizes the similarities to a point where race, genre, and era seem to no longer matter.

A complementary work, the recently released and aptly titled video piece “Musicvision Phoenix” brings their fostering of musical dialogue to a new (and more literal) level. Running nearly 70 minutes, and consisting of little more than shots of a spinning turntable with the band’s commentary edited over the music, “Musicvision” is certainly a commitment. The video, directed by Guillaume Dellaperriere, confirms what Phoenix was only able to say through implication on the Kitsuné record. A song by foundational ’60s band The Red Krayola “Victory Garden,” for instance, is featured on both outputs. Whereas on the “Tabloid,” the song’s appeal and relative significance is left for the listener to discover themselves, “Musicvision” leaves little to the imagination, and much for discussion. “The awkwardness is perfect,” declares singer Thomas Mars. Bassist Deck D’Arcy asserts that his attraction to the song comes from his inability to understand why it moves him and how it functions. “D’Angelo is the only other artist we’ve found who can manage this kind of alchemy,” he continues, oblivious to the humor of a Frenchmen even knowing who D’Angelo is, let alone calling him a musical master.

While both of these releases have certain appeal for fans of the band, the value of spending 70 minutes listening to four strangers blabber on (with subtitles, to boot!) about their favorite songs may seem dubious. But regardless of one’s relation to the band, there is something undeniably modern and worthwhile in hearing people so deeply moved by such diverse forms of music speaking as much from their standpoint as musicians and songwriters, as from the position of common music lovers. Songs are held up as often for their craftsmanship as their ability to enhance everyday life. Tracks are often characterized as “living room songs,” or “songs for long car rides,” so much so that you can’t help but see for yourself.

There’s something both charming and surprisingly relatable about four guys from Versaille, a tiny town only minutes outside of Paris, characterizing the musical offerings of their childhood as on par with, say, life on Venus, or China during the cultural revolution. As guitarist Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz cryptically explains, “The thing about being French is that everything that’s good is far away, and thus more magical. Anything that’s far is hazy, and anything that’s hazy is better... That’s our benediction, coming from France, a place so remote.”

With “Tabloid” and “Musicvision,” the four lifelong friends that comprise Phoenix give us entrée into the most profound and lasting of their “Aha!” moments, recalling a line from that most French of films, “Jules and Jim.” On the friendship of the two protagonists, the film’s narrator comments, “Each taught the other his language and culture... They shared their poetry and translated them together.

—Staff writer Ruben L. Davis can be reached at rldavis@fas.harvard.edu.