Aidan Curran posted on February 24, 2009 18:00
We had been worried. Last autumn Phoenix (below right) posted 'Twenty One One Zero', a track from the sessions for their new album, 'Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix', the follow-up to 2006's brilliant 'It's Never Been Like That'.
The trouble was that we found it disappointing: a three-minute intro of tired electronic loops all building to enormodome-friendly rawk dynamics. It sounded like a photocopy of the opening minute of 'Where The Streets Have No Name', and if we wanted rewrites of old U2 songs we could just go and listen to new U2 songs.
But now Phoenix have just aired the first single of that upcoming album and it's smashing stuff. Yes!
Keeping with the vague number/year theme of that earlier track, the new song is called '1901'. Out go the Eno/Edge-isms: '1901' picks up the alt-pop of 'It's Never Been Like That' and runs with it into electronic beats. All the while, Phoenix keep their unique blend of post-punk attitude and indie romanticism - singer Thomas Mars sounds as lovelorn as ever.
The track has the familiar Phoenix structure of long, looping verses building to a long, looping chorus. As always with this band's material, there's no catchy hook that would get it on mainstream radio; world domination will have to wait once more. But that's a minor gripe: '1901' is fresh and exciting stuff.
'Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart' will be released on 25 May. Before that, you can download '1901' for free from Phoenix's website or simply have a listen to it on Phoenix's MySpace page. Or, to make it even easier for you, have a listen to it on this home-made video:
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