Album Review: Phoenix - Bankrupt!

Four years after storming into the global subconscious with 2009's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, French synth-rock four-piece Phoenix are back with album number five. For some the preceding years must have felt like an age stretched to the ends of the universe. Question is, how does Bankrupt! rank in Wolfgang...'s wake? The short answer is great; in a cursory sense it picks up perfectly where their previous very proficiently left off.

The somewhat longer answer is that there's less of an emphasis on the same crowd-winning formula used so successfully before. Unlike Listomania and 1901, whose adorations were won with distinctly original, bright and hooky choruses that charmed the pants off all and sundry, most of Bankrupt!'s tunes lean a shade more towards the whims of the gentlemen that created them. But there are still those same buzzing, dual keyboard lines and Thomas Mars' double-edged vocals, just less instantly loveable hooks. That's not to say the band have spiralled into arty, avant-garde stuff; Entertainment's oriental key-line and socking beat is the first proof that this joie de vivre is simply part of their marrow. The keys take a backseat in the more restrained offbeat '80s pop of The Real Thing and the cool by name and nature Trying To Be Cool, but it's Drakkar Noir and Don't that score high; racing beats and sunny rays of keys stabbing through that thick underlay.

Despite the lack of anthemic choruses, Bankrupt! is never dull; Phoenix's song-crafting is either ahead of the times or from a different planet entirely. One never quite knows which tack these guys will take, despite a comfortable feeling that you think you do. Complacency, in our case, is bliss.