To write their new album the Gallic quartet Phoenix decamped to various locales away from their home studio in Versailles, searching for the stimulus necessary to transform the new material into a coherent LP. "We spent a long time waiting for the chemical reaction," says guitarist Laurent Brancowitz, "that moment when a song isn't just the sum of all of our parts, but it's something more. And the idea was to go someplace we'd never been." Actually, they went to a few: Brancowitz and his bandmates Thomas Mars (vocals), Christian Mazzalai (guitar), and Deck D'Arcy (bass) worked in the Parisian studio of 19th-century Romantic painter Théodore Géricault, chartered a houseboat on the Seine, and stayed at the Bowery Hotel in NYC for a month, among others. As the guitarist explains with self-effacing humour, "It was like our Orson Welles moment"

As you'd expect, the travelling took its toll, leaving only a trip back from whence they came as a means of allowing the songs to gel, this time in the Montmartre home of Philippe Zdar, the producer known for his work as half of French house duo Cassius. Zdar, a longtime friend, lent Phoenix his studio and wound up producing the record alongside the band — the first time Phoenix has recruited outside help.

The results collected on Wolfgang amount to easily the best album in their already-amazing catalogue. Featuring the band's signature melding of synthetics and organics, of sharp, danceable rhythms and intense guitars, of effortless melody with a considerable dose of aural panache, the album's ten songs are more layered than previous efforts. "On our last album, we were trying to make a minimalist, fat-free record… something austere, almost ascetic," Brancowitz explains. "This time we wanted to create something more elaborate." That's evident on electro-tinged slow jams like ‘Fences’, the sweeping and mostly instrumental ‘Love Like a Sunset’ and the spirited pop of lead-off track ‘Lisztomania’.

The Rocking New French Musical Scene 

 On the 23rd April at the Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen

7pm

Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen

2 Hoxton Square
London N1 6NU
United Kingdom

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 On the 1st June at Koko's

7pm

Koko

1A Camden High Street
London
NW1 7JE

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