Phoenix’s ‘Alpha Zulu’: Album Assessment

1 / 4 century after the French quartet Phoenix fashioned, it hardly appears seemingly that they’d take advantage of fresh-sounding album because the one which lit up the alt-rock charts in 2009, “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart” — however they’ve carried out it with “Alpha Zulu.” It’s not a reinvention nor even significantly totally different from their earlier efforts — the whizzing synthesizers, buoyant chords and effervescent, exhilarating choruses couldn’t be anybody else, even with out Thomas Mars’ unmistakable vocals. However they’ve optimized and maximized their template in a means that appears easy.  

That spirit in all probability stems largely from the bandmembers’ elation at reuniting after eight months of lockdown, writing the entire album’s songs collectively in a shuttered museum they’d rented, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which is a part of the Louvre complicated in central Paris; each track on the album besides one, “Winter Solstice,” was written by the quartet collectively (each parts are mirrored within the album’s neo-classic cowl art work). “We couldn’t cease producing music,” stated guitarist Christian Mazzalai within the album’s bio. “In these first 10 days, we wrote nearly the entire album.” The album can be infused with the reminiscence of their pal and collaborator Philippe Zdar, who died in 2019.

Regardless of the tragedy that preceded it and the desolation of the abandoned museum and the locked down metropolis round them, the elation of the reunion is clear within the songs, one thing that displays the proverbial zeitgeist that all of us felt when seeing mates after too lengthy aside. There’s an uplift and optimism to the songs that makes this probably the group’s most cheerful album thus far — it begins off downright peppy (significantly with the hovering “Tonight,” which options Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig on vocals) earlier than easing into slower and extra introspective songs. The entire thing breezes by in a fast 35 minutes that’s over too quick.