PHOENIX
It’s Never Been Like That
Arts & Crafts / Astralwerks
· Director Sofia Coppola and the lead singer are having a baby. Watch for Phoenix playing a Baroque-styled song on 18th century guitars in Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
If anyone had criticism for the seven-year-old band Phoenix, it was that their soft-rock was antediluvian. It was too painstakingly retrospective of, let’s face it, a stirrup pants era in music. Despite hailing from fashionable Versailles, the French quartet didn’t sound as hip as their popular indie rock counterparts in North America.
On their third studio album, It’s Never Been Like That, Phoenix finally find the store that the cool kids shop in. Some songs share a similar skip as Spoon’s "I Summon You," while others leap to life with jangly rhythmic guitars strongly reminiscent of The Strokes.
Showing much more personality, largely due to vocalist Thomas Mars adopting more of a rock swagger, the third time is the charm for Phoenix. They’ve put their own spin on a far more flattering modern sound and it suits them to a T.
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