The Ashes of Phoenix

If there are great eras of music in my life, one of them happens to be the one that coincides with the rise of Pandora (and, later, Spotify). In Austin in the last few years before 2010, I remember finding Tift Merritt, the First Aid Kit, the deeper solo work of Peter Murphy on Pandora. After we returned to San Francisco in 2010, it seemed every playlist and algorithmic guess from the music machines had one entry in common: Phoenix’s “Lisztomania.”

Where’d they go? I mean Phoenix as I ask that, but I also, come to think of it, mean Pandora. And why? Was there some cultural moment that they were a part of that is now dust?

In 2009-2010, Phoenix’s album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” seems to have incepted every playlist algorithm and advertiser that this is what every market wanted to hear. It may well have been the dying moment of the monoculture before society fractured into a million shards of distrust and echo chambers. Its heavy-hitter songs were “Lisztomania” and “1901.”

The music was gentle and poppy with hook-y synthesizers layered on top sounding like a Blondie track that could do the footwork of Muhammad Ali. It was also unabashedly optimistic, coming in the middle of the first Obama term, there was light, internationalist hope even as we were trying to put the 2008 financial meltdown into the rearview mirror.

But let’s not beat around the bush, the center of Phoenix’s sound is Thomas Mars’, uh, distinct vocals. It’s nasally, but not too; Gallic-inflected, but not incomprehensible. His whole affect suggests the casual ability to blend into a show in Williamsburg or slide into a star’s dressing room (specifically the one shown in the Maggie Gyllenhaal vignette of “Paris, je t’aime” after she departs a very Sofia Coppola-esque color-palette set).¹

And it’s not just the vocals, it’s the lyrics. They’re abject nonsense, but in his throat they somehow become…dreamy, gauzy impressionistic paintings of lighthearted freedom itself e.g. “Fold it, fold it, fold it, fold it” or “Dualette. Juggalette.” Quoi?

And while it sounds supremely dickish to say, one gets the sense that while Phoenix might survive replacing any other member, Mars’ voice is irreplaceable, he’s the very essence of their Franco-pop alchemy. You could drop Mars into another band and hear echoes of Phoenix, but Phoenix without Mars would be unthinkable. ²

But perhaps what’s changed isn’t just Phoenix (who, to be fair, have continued making music, including 2022’s “Alpha Zulu”), but rather our appetite for that particular brand of carefree artiness. The band emerged in a brief window between recessions, sucking the last fumes of Obama-era hope and change before we collectively tumbled into the doom and cynicism loop that led to now. In our current era of increased global tension and fragmented cultural discourse, there seems less room for the kind of playful experimentation that characterized that moment. Yet listening back to those tracks now, there’s something oddly poignant, even kissed by sadness, about their determined lightness.

Footnotes

In fact, I imagine Mars meeting his real-life wife Sofia Coppola at that party. And yes, while the movie came out later than their actual meeting this is chronologically impossible, but my imagination does not care.
But this in itself is no crime: Journey without Steve Perry or Queen without Freddie Mercury, Matchbox 20 without Rob Thomas are all the same. Smile boys, you’ll never have to work as an obligation.