Phoenix
Alpha Zulu
GLASSNOTE/LOYAUTÉ
Of course the French foursome Phoenix recorded Alpha Zulu at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, inside the Louvre in Paris. Vocalist Thomas Mars, bassist Deck D’Arcy, and guitarists (and brothers) Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz holed up in a custom-built studio space in a private section of the world-renowned museum and spun up their seventh collection of indie-pop songs with plenty of glowing synthesizers and electric guitars. They recorded most of the album while the museum was closed to the public during the COVID lockdown.
Alpha Zulu often grabs the veteran rock band’s usual bag of pop tricks and gives it a good shake. Some positive and negative elements remain on the floor from their last two albums, 2017’s Ti Amo and 2013’s Bankrupt!, but at least the 10 tracks breeze by with little room to stop and contemplate the contours of each one. This is probably their most solid attempt at a style shakeup since 2009’s breakout Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which still remains their high bar to clear.
Whereas previous albums were specifically in the hard-charging indie-pop lane, Alpha Zulu is all over the road, for better or for worse. There are neon-drenched bursts of electro beats (the title track, “The Only One”) and hard-edged techno (“All Eyes on Me”), while “Artefact” has some of Phoenix’s late-2000s indie-rock spirit. The marquee song is an early single called “Tonight,” which leaps off the record as a festival-crowd-pleasing duet with Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig that also kind of sounds like a Strokes jam.
An odd track from the jump, another early single called “Winter Solstice” is the first song in Phoenix’s discography to not be crafted collectively by the band in a studio. Thomas Mars laid out his stream-of-consciousness lyrics over an electrified beat as the rest of the band locked in their elements piece-by-piece via the internet. “Now it’s hard to connect / But the world’s unchained,” Mars sighs over a melancholic atmosphere. It’s a modern and emotionally varied look for Phoenix, but even their best songs have had more than a tinge of sadness. Their continued flirtations with electronic production works OK, but light and airy guitar rock with a little jangle will always be the band’s sweet spot.
Phoenix made Alpha Zulu sound fun and effortless, but it’s no doubt there were countless hours fretting over edits, reworks, and mixes to get the album finished during a trying time for the band and the world at large. For the latest artifact in the ongoing Phoenix collection, it’s certainly an album that warrants some time and reflective study. The hard and soft edges of the past meet similar edges in the present, and the band plays on even if the museum’s lights are off. As Mars says on the title track, “Take a bow / Vow to the sky / If you want to wait, great!”
