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Jakarta Post

Phoenix: Shining light in times of darkness

French new wave band Phoenix has stayed consistent in bringing charm and cheer to a musical landscape.

Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, August 11, 2017

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Phoenix: Shining light in times of darkness The Phoenix: Members of French rock band Phoenix (from left) Deck d’Arcy, Thomas Mars, Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz pose for a picture in New York. (AFP/Angela Weiss)

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rench new wave band Phoenix is a band that has stayed consistent in bringing charm and cheer to a musical landscape that has since been ravaged by social justice problems and a pessimistic overall mindset.

The 20-year-old French band, Phoenix, is coming fresh off of releasing their latest album Ti Amo, which is a cavalcade of candied summery sounds, amorous lyrics and sunny atmosphere. 

Inspiration for the album came from summers on the Italian coast and a desire to create a positive world view amidst the tensions in France over the past few years. 

Musically, the band sees the album as a simple and pure one, distant from the complexities of their last album, Bankrupt!, released in 2013. What makes Phoenix stand out from their French peers is the way that they manage to maintain their optimism above all. 

Phoenix’s albums have not lost any of its charm. On each, listeners can hear a band that is content in their camaraderie as friends and artists, evolving together and delivering an inclusive experience with their listeners. 

Since 2009’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the epic album that really elevated the band’s name to a loftier place, Phoenix seems to deliver their albums as events that the world should take part in, alongside the band. 

Bankrupt! was rolled out in a broad and encompassing fashion, with things such as Spotify commentary tracks and much-hyped previews of their songs. Bankrupt! took them around the world in its corresponding tour, including a 2014 gig in Jakarta, where they had also played back in 2009.

Phoenix guitarist Christian Mazzalai has fond moments of the band’s visits to Jakarta. 

The 2014 concert was especially memorable for being set outside in the middle of incredibly heavy rains. Despite being forced to rush through their set and their equipment getting wetter by the second, Mazzalai said it was still one of their best shows ever.

Thomas Mars
Thomas Mars (AFP/Patricia De Melo Moreira)

“We played in a crazy rainy condition, the likes of which we never get in Europe,” Mazzalai said in a recent phone interview ahead of their third Indonesian performance on Aug. 12 at the upcoming We The Fest musical festival.

“The show was almost cancelled because of that, but we saw that people were staying anyway, so we played on and it ended up being so crazy. Of course, we had to come back!” he said.

The guitarist, who has been with the band since 1997 along with its three other members — vocalist Thomas Mars, bassist Deck D’Arcy and guitarist Laurent Brancowitz — said the determination and passion of the Indonesian crowd was what made the country worth returning to. 

On a personal level, Mazzalai and his brother are particularly enamored by the structure of Indonesian music, saying that the Javanese musical scale was very unique and poetic in form. Some of Javanese music’s uniqueness and rhythms have found a subtle way into Phoenix’s music. 

“It’s a very poetic musical landscape you have. The way [the Indonesian scale] plays two notes is different from the way [the French] play two notes. When you subtract all the complexities, there is only simple poetry, but with lots of power. When there is less to work with, there is more space for something beautiful,” he said. 

In the past few years, France has been ravaged by terrorist incidents, which have forced the country to declare numerous states of emergency and have caused the loss of many innocent lives. 

To cope with the atrocities, Phoenix chose instead to isolate themselves in the recording studio in order to create music that could serve as an antithesis to the fear gripping their home country.

The result was Ti Amo, which is also as much an expression of their desire to create a lost or forgotten European paradise to defuse some of the tension. 

“Music-wise, we wanted to get as far as possible from our last album. We didn’t really have a plan on where to start, but we wanted it to be a surprise. So with Ti Amo, we kind of did it to make music to heal the tension,” Mazzalai explained. 

He also said this way of thinking was an inherently French one, and one that has driven Phoenix to always push themselves differently with every release. 

“I think it’s a French thing to look very far from where you are. French artists like [the late] Serge Gainsbourg, he wrote his happiest songs when he was saddest, and vice versa. Maybe that’s our goal: to create an entirely different world every time.”

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Phoenix will play on the second day of We The Fest on Aug. 12. The music festival, held by Ismaya Live, will run Aug. 11-13 at the JIExpo Kemayoran in Central Jakarta. Other acts include The Kooks, Charli XCX and Big Sean.

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