Every summer has a sound. Last year, Vampire Weekend and MGMT soundtracked festivals and barbecues the world over and now, at the dawn of summer ’09, it’s starting to sound like Phoenix could very well be the band of the season. The French quartet cut their teeth as fellow countrymen Air’s backing band for the soundtrack of 1999s critically acclaimed movie The Virgin Suicides, which incidentally was how lead singer, Thomas Mars, first met his girlfriend and baby-mama, director Sofia Coppola. Drummer Laurent Brancowitz joined Phoenix after leaving his former band with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, who would later go on to become dance duo extraordinaire, Daft Punk. Thanks to their lofty associations, Phoenix have gone on to garner a devout army of fans and with release of their latest album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, an effervescently playful album of clever pop sensibilities, it looks like these Frenchmen are showing no signs of letting up. Totally Dublin spoke to an excitable Thomas Mars just hours before Phoenix kicked off their festival season at Barcelona’s Primavera and, by the sounds of things, Phoenix are ready to launch an all-out pop assault on the ears of anybody who happens to come into contact with a radio this summer.
You’re touring on the back of your latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Can you explain where the title of the album came from?
I think it’s because we grew up in Versailles and the weight of the past there is so overwhelming that, in a way, the only way to exist is if you do something like this. There was a Jeff Koons exhibition at the Palace of Versailles that we loved. The fact that you can see Michael Jackson’s painting with his monkey in Louis XIV’s bedroom; the whole city was like a museum on standby. It’s the idea that you take something very iconic and just mess with it, like the moustache on Mona Lisa.
The lead single from the album, Lisztomania, also has its roots in the past. What is Phoenix’s obsession with days gone by?
I think that there were so many French bands who, when they sang in English, were really just translating; they would be talking about Cadillacs and Jukeboxes, things that were really American. We went in the opposite direction. I don’t think it’s something conscious but we want to talk about our everyday life. Things like historical figures are very appealing to us and we like to mix things that shouldn’t match. There is something satisfying about two things that are not supposed to glue but you manage to put them together; like Franz Liszt with a modern synthesiser and guitar riff. We were happy to put those things together.
I believe that you were offered a French Legion of Honour, which you declined. Can you tell us about that?
(Laughs) How did you know this?
It’s a secret.
You know, Churchill would say [about the Legion of Honour] that you accept it but you do not ask for it – people usually have to ask for it – he said that you accept it but you do not wear it. I think that’s the classiest way to do it because you don’t offend anyone but at the same time you’re not trying to pretend you’re someone that you’re not. It’s the same with awards; for us it would be a very depressing moment because it wouldn’t be an achievement, it would be more like the end of something.
Your songs have a very playful, almost childlike element to them. Do you have a very carefree attitude to the recording process?
No, it’s not fun at all! Our lives are a lot of fun and we really enjoy being together but in the studio it’s different. The best moment is in the end when you know you have the record and you can share it with your friends and the band before people can hear it. But when we are making music it’s like we need to be in some sort of a trance; we need our egos to be tired, we need our bodies to be tired, we need our systems to be so exhausted that there’s no exception. Everything has to come from an exhausted body and then you realise, when you hear it in song, that what you’ve come up with is so different from who you are. That’s what we like most, things that surprise us.
For an extended interview check out the next, Phoenix-adorned issue of Totally Dublin. Their latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is on good record shop shelves now.
