Name Check
Mars explained the rationale behind naming the album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”: “We liked the idea of taking something iconic and messing with it. It’s childish, like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. And it felt very modern.”
Updated 19:17, September the 27th, 2009
French revolution
Phoenix created latest album on their own terms
To create their brilliant new album, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” French pop band Phoenix didn’t just take one of those rejuvenating brainstorming retreats or seek out a muse. They began a full-on renaissance.
“We were living in this bubble,” says singer Thomas Mars about the year and a half he and his bandmates spent holed up in an apartment in Montmartre, playing and recording.
“The idea was to have the good pressure. There was no bad pressure — no deadline,” says Mars.
The new songs — a collection of dreamy electro pop, disco, euphoria-inducing guitar solos and a crescendo of percussion that resurges the intense, racing heartbeats of teen love — are refreshing.
“It’s a cliche, but being romantics is in our DNA,” says Mars, laughing. (He is, by the way, dating Sofia Coppola, and the two have a daughter together.) “But being romantic is also a threatening state, it’s a very uncomfortable state. It deals with melancholy and rebellion and revolution, so I think it’s very French.”