The assured sound of Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was more than just the French band’s breakthrough in America: It christened a new, electro-aided era of indie rock. It brought the “French Touch” known from Phoenix’s earlier work — as well as Daft Punk, childhood friends of Phoenix guitarists Christian Mazzalai and Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz— to a rousing, widescreen format. The album is ritzy and elevated, but the journey to get there was not quite as glamorous.
Speaking to Branco and Mazzalai in Los Angeles ahead of their performance at Just Like Heaven 2024 — a time capsule to the indie era Phoenix helped usher in — the two musicians are wary of giving in to nostalgia. “We are not really nostalgic people, as humans,” Branco says. “But it’s good sometimes to look back at those moments of our lives — we know the power of that music and what it means to people. So tonight is one of those shows where we indulge in this emotion.”
Phoenix’ audience had been growing before Wolfgang. Their third album, It’s Never Been Like That, capitalized on their predominantly European audience while remaining a bit of a secret stateside — they toured in the US, but never at venues bigger than clubs.
Their savvy blend of synth-soaked rock was far from fashionable in 2006. Mainstream alternative radio found itself in a great conundrum of post-post-grunge, Fall Out Boy-style pop-punk, and whatever Red Hot Chili Peppers were doing on Stadium Arcadium. But the indie scene began bubbling up, and meanwhile, Phoenix found themselves free from a record label, thrust into the “blog era” with the world at their feet. “We were just coming from a big tour in the US and the world,” Mazzalai says. “We had the energy!”
Before holing up in a studio to record their fourth effort, the band decided to try something romantic and write music in selective locales, starting with a hotel room in New York. “We shared a room together,” Mazzalai recalls to Branco. “We had a fantasy because we knew one of our heroes François Truffaut, the French film director, would write all of his scripts in hotels and would never go out of the hotel. So we had the dream, the fantasy, to know all the employees at the hotel, to really be creative there.”
Though the duo confesses that not much came from those early New York sessions, one song began there: “Rome,” a bit of a counterintuitive title for the one song they wrote in America. Nevertheless, Phoenix continued finding new spots for inspiration once Mazzalai claims they “discovered the beauty of changing the environment.” One such location was a boat on the Seine River in their native Paris — gorgeous, romantic, and inspirational, yes, but practical? Definitely not. “This was the only place where we wrote zero, nothing at all,” Mazzalai says. “We were a bit seasick. The water looks still when you see it from the bank, but it’s not still at all!”
