Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, released in 2009 is a 10-song indie pop album released by the four-piece band Phoenix. This is the band’s fourth album release.
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. By Phoenix Read Reviews. CD $ 12.34 $12.99 Save 5% Current price is $12.34, Original price is $12.99. View All Available Formats & Editions. Ship This Item — Qualifies for Free Shipping Buy Online, Pick up in Store. Future Music visit the incredible studio of Cassius member and production genius, Philippe Zdar. Watch as he breaks down tracks from the Phoenix Album, Wolfg. Yet, somehow, we’ve never made a Phoenix album our Album of the Week. This madness must stop! Frankly, the decision to make Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix our AOW this week was an easy one. WAP is, hands down, Phoenix’s best album so far, and one of the best pop releases of the year, though followed closely by Metric. Hype has spread.
UK Deluxe two CD edition includes a bonus CD that contains remixes of album tracks by Alex Metric, Passion Pit, Friendly Fires, Chairlift, Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective and others. 2009 album from the French Electro-Rockers. Born out of restlessness and a steady hunt for inspiration, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a career-defining album filled with the.
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a lighthearted album comprised of radio-friendly hits, lyrics reminiscent to love songs, and well-crafted motifs and hooks that make it the band’s best-selling album to date. According to Genius, the album has “received critical acclaim from both music publications and the Grammy’s, and the lead singles ‘1901’ and ‘Lisztomania’ have been played over 125 million times combined on Spotify.
TRACK LINEUP
Lisztomania
Kicking off the album with one of its greatest hits, Lisztomania is an upbeat indie rock track with a very interesting metaphor. “Lisztomania” is a witty reference to “Beatlemania,” a craze in the 1960 revolving around British rock band, The Beatles. In The Virtuoso Liszt, it is explained that classical composer Franz Liszt had his own period of mania, yet it was much more controlled. During Beatlemania, The Beatles actually had to stop touring due to the amount of disruptive screaming during performances, suggesting that fans only liked the band because of their status as an icon, as opposed to their actual music. Lead singer Thomas Mars sings about how conflicted he is. During performances, fans held their applause until the end, and the scene was much more “high-class”. While Mars prefers the sense of respect that came from the classical period, it is attached to several societal norms and expectations that are seen as burdens in the modern day. The chorus encapsulates this feeling very well, and how corrupted love is a byproduct of these unhealthy social norms. At its peak, the song reached #4 on Billboard’s US Alternative chart. A video of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her college friends dancing to the song even went viral recently, as an attempt to smear her term in Congress backfired. Lisztomania is a cute and joyful hit, and possibly one of the most approachable songs on the album.
1901
Another track released to high praise, 1901 is another indie rock track with touches of synths. When it comes to the lyrics, it’s a bit ambiguous. According to Genius, the song is about the flourishing of 19th to 20th century Paris. “The peace and prosperity in Paris allowed the arts to flourish, and many masterpieces of literature, music, theater, and visual art gained recognition.” Phoenix, being made up of French members has a strong attachment to the region. Mars says, “It’s a song about Paris. Paris in 1901 was better than what it is now. It’s still nice, but 1901 was better. This is a fantasy about Paris.“ Other than the viewpoints of band members, the lyrics really don’t have any other hints within them. It’s odd – with this track being one of the best sounding and popular tracks according to many, you would think the lyrics would support the positive sentiments. What I’ve found, is that there is a common theme with this album – where many songs’ composition carries the track, while the lyrics remain enigmatic. 1901 is a great sounding track, but is undeniably puzzling as well.
Fences
With this track, the theme continues. Fences, is quite literally about lovers building “fences,” or walls, distancing themselves and hurting others in the process. The language used in this track is really basic, and all of the lyrics have bare-bones meanings. Again, the instrumentals are good, with an especially impressive bass line. But the lyrics simply don’t cut it. The simple chorus consists of: “Fences, in a row. Fences, in a row. Wired and protected, in a row.” Later on, the song even says that the woman in question “would rather mess with me than get going,” going as far to suggest that it’s the woman’s fault for not escalating the relationship, characterizing the entire song as extremely predatory, almost forcing a woman to comply with her boyfriend’s desires because he claims that she is simply “fencing people off”. The entire thing just comes off to me as uncomfortable, even in its good parts, and it’s a shame.
Love Like a Sunset, Part I
Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Rare
This track is entirely instrumental. It begins with a high pitched synth melody, with other synth effects, resembling a soft engine, or a vehicle speeding by. The synth melody augments, and an acoustic guitar enters, with a darker sound appearing. A xylophone repeats a pedal tone, as the synths and guitar switch moods with chords. Finally, the electric guitars enter, playing motifs from other tracks on the album such as Armistice, which will come back later. The synths escalate, until everything stops for a split second. The engine returns, with a much more tonal sound, like an electric amp. The future motif returns, and the drums enter. The motif takes center stage, with an impressive guitar line. More synth effects layer on as the instruments crescendo. The track has an impressive buildup to a B minor ending, but the instruments fall and fade first, with the engine noises malfunctioning into silence. I think this is an excellent instrumental track, as far as instrumental tracks go. There are obviously no shallow lyrics to groan over, and the motifs displayed return in future songs on the album, giving this track an artful reasoning for existing in the first place. It’s obviously more of a synth track than a rock track, and it’s 5 minutes and 39 seconds long, which may be a bit of a stretch for some. My only huge gripe I have is the title, which I will get into on…
Love Like a Sunset, Part II
This track isn’t entirely instrumental, but the instrumentals definitely take center stage here. In comparison to Part I, this track is only 1 minute and 57 seconds, leaving me a bit confused as to why this wasn’t just one longer track. The engine sound returns, albeit weakly. The electric guitars enter with a more upbeat mood, in Bb Major. This key difference is very jarring, having the tonic be only a half step from Part I’s key. The only lyrics are “Acres, a visible horizon. Right where it starts, it ends. Oh, when did we start the end? Acres, a visible illusion. Oh, where it starts it ends. Love like a sunset.” I think this is a boring metaphor that can basically be watered down to “love is big.” This part has no relevant motifs to display, nor interesting lyrics. There’s honestly not much to get excited about here.
Lasso
Jumping back into tracks with lyrics, Lasso represents dreams of being a free spirit. It starts out with a catchy drum track and guitar riff, and Mars jumps in with the lyrics. The melody is much more interesting this time around, and the relationship between the instruments is very harmonious. The drums in particular are super impressive. For the bridge there is a laid back guitar solo, before the final outro. The track is 2 minutes and 48 seconds, which is definitely on the shorter side. Once again, the problems start to appear when you dissect the lyrics. They are about the relationship of a man and a woman who go back and forth shutting each other out, due to commitment issues and societal expectations. But the actual words are so garbled and confusing that simply listening to the track would not suggest that at all. “Wear your real eyes. No, you don’t realize what you say yes to but you say yes too.” It just doesn’t make sense, and these lines are so phonetically similar that it is nearly impossible to hear them unless you look up the lyrics online while you listen, just like I did. While the instrumentals and composition are of a very high standard, the lyrics fall short once again.
Rome
This song mashes up intense synths with with a satisfying guitar line. The voice line, however, typically stays around a close group of notes, sometimes repeating the same note for a very long time. This song’s metaphor is supposed to compare a fragile relationship to the fall of Rome and the Colosseum. This is a fine comparison, but the lyrics characterize the fragile relationship by tempting the listener to seek an unknown lover “waiting in a tropical sunset,” making one believe that a better love than your current relationship is just around the corner. While the literal lyrics are easier to interpret than previous songs, there is still phonetic confusion, hemiola within words, and a large tonal fracture: including yet not juxtaposing two differing sets of imagery. Those images are the fall of Rome, and the mystery lover on a tropical sunset. There is no musical difference when describing those two differing images, and it makes the message of the song unclear, despite its impressive instrumental feats.
Countdown
This track discusses the prospect of only living once, and losing our sense of idealism as we grow older. The scales and synths are catchy, and the verses and pre-choruses sound nice. The chorus itself is boring and the instrumentals carry it through. There’s no real meaning to these lyrics, they just discuss a topic as broad as human existence and experience, without any commentary on the matter. The chorus, once again, has some very repetitive lyrics, forcing the instruments to bare all of the heavy lifting. “We’re sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick. We’re sick for the big sun. We rumble and trip, trip, trip, trip, trip, trip, trip. I realize that too.” The topic of the song is disconnected from the rest of the album, and doesn’t follow along any type of theme that other tracks in the album presented. Like clockwork, the instrumentals carry yet another track.
Girlfriend
The track begins with scales reminiscent of Countdown’s scales, bringing a comfortable flow between tracks. The guitars and drums are groovy, and the vocal melody is well written this time around. This time around, Mars sings of a sentimental farewell with a girl, due to absence of a true connection, claiming that their lives until death will be nothing but loneliness if they stay together. The lyrics in this track finally check some of the boxes for coherency and artistry. It’s a clear resolution of previous tracks, being quite problematic in nature, with Mars finally realizing what’s best for him is to simply move on. Despite being a song about a breakup, it’s the closest thing on the album to a love song, with the sweet chords and major resolution. That’s not to say there aren’t still problems. The phonetics are still poor, with the entire second verse’s lyrics being a total surprise to me until I read them. The track also doesn’t thematically relate to the motif of “time and place” at all. Lisztomania, 1901, Rome, and arguably more tracks all had a strong connection to history and location, but half of the album has absolutely none of that. Despite Girlfriend being a very solid song, the tonal fracture still exists.
Armistice
The percussive sounds at the beginning, along with the guitar during the introduction flash back to Love Like a Sunset, Part I when the motif was first introduced. The percussion is one of the most impressive parts of this track instrumentally, as well as the the synth solo before the outro. The sung melody is a bit generic, but it spices up once the guitar enters with a countermelody. The lyrics are about a lovers’ arrangement, an armistice signaling a temporary break from a fight. This is odd, because the verses suggest that there’s already a breakup proceeding. “Some lovers know it ain’t gonna wear out. To each his own the same, look what you wasted.” Chronologically, this song’s placement as the final track on the album is so baffling to me. Girlfriend had a perfect resolution, with a mutual understanding, a major resolution, and a comprehensive narrative. This track, coming right after a breakup track, is so confusing to me, I don’t even know where to begin. The track ends with high pitched synthesizers fading, and it doesn’t even resolve on the tonic. The instrumentals are once again great, but Armistice’s placement and meaning definitely detract from the experience.
Least Favorite Track: Fences and Love Like a Sunset, Part II
Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Rare
Favorite Track: Girlfriend and 1901
Considering that Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is one of my favorite albums of all time, I was surprised at how harshly I treated it. Instrumentally, there’s something to enjoy with practically every track, minus maybe one. But the lyrical and thematic inconsistencies within the album really spoke to me. Why doesn’t the album end with Girlfriend? Why isn’t Love Like a Sunset a single track? Why does only half of the album have themes regarding time and place, and why does another half of the album have themes regarding love? Some songs, even with huge lyrical and motivic inconsistencies, are able to prevail due to their composition. One such example is 1901. I recommend this album, I honestly do… but I think it should be enjoyed without paying mind to the lyrics. And it wouldn’t hurt if the songs were added to a larger playlist or shuffled. I still enjoy this album, but I fear that I am killing my enjoyment by reading into aspects that I never have looked at before. I really hope I don’t have to dig into other longtime favorites this hard ever again.
The year was 2009; the song was “1901.” Even more so than “My Girls,” “Two Weeks,” and “Stillness Is The Move” — and arguably only eclipsed by the long-tail dominance of Oracular Spectacular’s troika of hits — the lead single from Phoenix’s cheekily titled Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix became the ambient hum of the year’s indie crossover boom. The album turns 10 years old this Saturday, and in keeping with the rising tide of 2009 nostalgia, it’s time to flash back.
Nowadays it sounds like a car commercial because that’s exactly what it became. But when Phoenix released “1901” at the end of winter, its synth-powered update on the lite guitar-pop mastery of It’s Never Been Like That simply sounded great. “It’s logical growth, really,” my Stereogum predecessor Amrit Singh blogged at the time. After all, “Guitarist Laurent Brancowitz was in a band with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo aka Daft Punk once upon a day.” Brancowitz himself saw Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix as a return to the sophisticated gloss of the band’s debut United, before they had the bright idea to turn indie rock into yacht rock, although in the same interview frontman Thomas Mars proclaimed, “The last record was about our present, this one is about our future.”
Whichever direction they were moving, “1901” was the sort of song that makes you want to come along, sleek and propulsive and absurdly catchy — also just plain absurd, thanks to Mars’ notoriously inscrutable lyrics. The way those keyboard blasts sliced across that steady Strokes guitar churn made for a hell of a hook even before Mars beamed in with his holographic melodies, capped off by a hall-of-fame mondegreen for a chorus. Or was it just me who long assumed Mars was singing, “Fallin’, fallin’, fallin’, fallin'”? (Real lyrics: “Fold it, fold it, fold it, fold it!”) Phoenix fans immediately dug it, and soon indie listeners in general did too. And then the album dropped, summer kicked in, and “1901” was everywhere.
So were Phoenix themselves. They maintained a ridiculous schedule throughout 2009, appearing on every late-night TV show and at seemingly every festival in the world. (Watching them kick out the jams before Crystal Castles and Girl Talk was the highlight of my one and only trip to Bonnaroo; choosing the aforementioned MGMT over Nine Inch Nails was my biggest mistake.) Thus, the eventual onslaught of syncs felt inevitable. Soon you could hear “1901” in both Gossip Girl and the rebooted Melrose Place, in PlayStation ads and PlayStation games alike. For one luxury automaker, it was out with “Rock And Roll,” in with French indie pop. A voiceover touted the SRX as “the Cadillac of crossovers,” a description that worked just as well for the song in the ad.
Remarkably, “1901” still had a ways to climb. It wouldn’t reach its #84 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 until January 2010. A month later it crested at #1 on the alternative charts, right around the time Phoenix won the Grammy for Best Alternative Album. For once, the Recording Academy got it right. The glory of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is that its other nine tracks are in the same league as “1901.” Some of them might even be better. For the second album in a row, Phoenix had honed in on an immensely appealing aesthetic and applied it to a batch of pop songs so effervescent you might not notice the meticulous craftsmanship.
The album’s other signature hit, “Lisztomania,” has actually been more enduring. It’s the one McDonald’s maybe ripped off, the one at the center of a major fair use lawsuit. Most famously, it’s the one that soundtracked viral footage of young socialist folk hero and Fox News archvillain Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing on a rooftop in college. “Lisztomania” is every bit as immaculate as “1901” and just as jaunty, with a beat that incites involuntary finger-snapping and an arrangement that moves — and gleams — like gears in a Swiss watch.
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix doesn’t peak with those two songs so much as it establishes a high standard the rest of the album mostly lives up to. The hard-charging “Lasso” indeed ropes you in with its confetti-bomb chorus, while “Rome,” “Countdown,” and “Girlfriend” continually find new ways to whoosh you into reverie. Despite its unmistakable aesthetic consistency, the album boasts surprising range; it’s broad enough to include “Fences,” a synth jam that both predicts and rebukes today’s chilled-out Spotifycore, and “Armistice,” the spy-movie heavy hitter that closes out the tracklist on a surprisingly muscular note. Their work was so contagiously catchy back then that even the requisite two-part experimental detour “Love Like A Sunset” plays out like a journey into the heart of pop music.
Phoenix have always handled their albums with care, but where the songwriting on more recent Bankrupt! and Ti Amo has been less consistently awesome, in the late aughts they were on fire. They’d tapped into something special on It’s Never Been Like That, a stylish, guitar-powered spin on easy listening that hit like cool summer breeze. The music was so casually brilliant and approachable that every song became an anthem even when you couldn’t tell what Mars was singing about, which was most of the time. His songs probably meant something to him, but on the receiving end, it was pleasure for pleasure’s sake from a band seemingly incapable of hitting a bum note.
Wolfgang maintained that spark. Gorgeous melodies continued to spill out of Mars, each vocal a Julian Casablancas hook converted into a beam of light. His bandmates kept on building brisk and agile vehicles for those tunes, this time souping them up with state-of-the-art technology with help from producer Philippe Zdar. Phoenix had always dabbled in electronic music, and on this album they merged that history with the organic guitar-pop they’d more recently perfected. This synthesis went over extremely well in the then-booming festival scene, where Phoenix would eventually ascend to headliner status largely on the strength of this album. It may have gone over a little too well, given the way alternative radio and fest lineups were soon flooded with inferior groups aping the synth-powered sounds of “1901,” “Kids,” and “Sleepyhead.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix wasn’t just built for festivals, though. It was designed for summer itself. In the US, the album came out on Memorial Day, the unofficial kickoff to the season, and proceeded to be indie kids’ go-to windows-down soundtrack for months to come. As the sun shines into my office window and I count the minutes until the launch of another holiday weekend, it sounds as spectacular as ever. We all require refreshment in this messed-up world, and a decade later Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix still hits the spot — an audio vacation 36 minutes at a time, every time.