And yet, something was off. the groove, that alchemy, had dissolved. After a few years of touring and hard work, d’Arcy slowly started to feel it coming back. “We had it again [2017’s] Ti Amo,” he says. “Nile Rodgers says you have to optimize the groove, and I think on this album” – Alpha Zulu, released yesterday – “we’re getting close.” The proof is in the pudding. The simple, strikingly catchy bass on Tonight, the band’s shiny new collaboration with Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, says Mars, is one of the best riffs ever: “I can say that, because I didn’t think of it.” He knows it’s a good thing, actually, because as with many of Phoenix’s best moments in the studio, the vibe was less Bohemian Rhapsody (Mars singles out the scene in the Queen biopic where John Deacon plays bass “and the Mercury like, What’s this!?” – that’s not real”) and more like the Beatles documentary Get Back, in which some of the greatest hooks and lyrics of all time are met with apathy, boredom and, most of all, yawns. “I yawn every 20 seconds when there’s a good idea,” Aris says, “because something in my body rejects the good idea.” Les quatre fabuleux … Phoenix (clockwise from top left) Christian Mazzalai, Thomas Mars, Deck D’arcy, Laurent Brancowitz. Photo: Sebastian Nevols/The Guardian Phoenix have been making unmatched pop for over 20 years, which gives Aris and his siblings some serious authority on the reality of the creative process. Huddled together in the sterile control room of a London studio, Mars, d’Arcy, Mazzalai and Brancowitz are the picture of a functional family unit, communicating with gestures and nods, finishing each other’s sentences and jumping to add details to each other. points. Although few of them live in the same city anymore – d’Arcy and Mazzalai live in Paris, while Branco lives in Rome and Mars in New York with his wife, the director Sofia Coppola – they still seem to have a really close bond. ; they may not be the same twenty-somethings they were on their first tours, cramming four beds together in a single hotel room to create a club of sorts, but they’re clearly just as close. Sitting with the quartet, it’s tempting to sit back and listen to them blurt out jokes and riffs – about French radio stations, British accents and their press coverage. (A common headline for Phoenix profiles: “Phoenix Rises from the Flames,” says Branco.) They are extremely kind and wonderful company – Mazzalai entertaining and wide-eyed cartoonish. d’Arcy quiet and angry. The witty, tired Branco, dressed in a Phoenix-branded work jacket. Ares polymath, sweet and a little sour. All four members balance a biblical sense of humor with the jokes you’d expect from a bunch of middle-aged dads. Hours after our interview, I meet Mazzalai, d’Arcy and Branco in central London’s St Pancras station, buying crisps and packaged poke bowls in a busy Marks & Spencer. At least two of the three make some sort of joke about packing me in their suitcases. We avoid recording studios, because Laurent Brancowitz is always very, very… boring This kindness and shared sense of humor is perhaps why, after more than two decades, Phoenix are making some of the most dizzyingly wonderful music of their career. Alpha Zulu, the band’s seventh album, is an eccentric career highlight that serves as a vivid reminder of what made them one of the most in-demand bands in the world in the early 2010s. the death of producer and member of the pioneering duo Cassius, Philippe Zdar, one of the band’s closest collaborators and friends – and a euphoria, the touch of EDM and dance-punk. adding weight to the album’s most memorable moments. Each Phoenix record, Mars says, is a reaction to the last – Bankruptcy!, a cynical, satirical response to the success of Grammy-winner Wolfgang. the vulgar, romantic Ti Amo, a softly lit counterpoint to its disillusioned predecessor; But “the motive,” says d’Arcy, “was always to be free and independent.” This central tenet instilled them in the 90s: friends in the French dance scene signed to labels and you quickly found success. At the same time, notes Mars, “it was just when Prince had ‘slave’ written all over his face.” “Daft Punk, they gave us the keys, because they released an album before us,” says Mazzalai. Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter’s father was in the industry. he had counseled his son’s ascendant twin on how to maintain integrity, and he did the same for Phoenix. “We had a meeting with him and he told us to protect your copyright, protect yourself, all these specific details and advice to not be a slave to your label.” This advice has helped the band put together a body of work that is uniquely, distinctly Phoenix. Wolfgang – with the singles Lisztomania and 1901, the latter of which went platinum in the US – dramatically changed the course of the band’s career, but not their sound. Even as those songs became ubiquitous and Phoenix began to push the boundaries of household name recognition, the band still stuck to the tried-and-tested process of meeting, assembling some kind of makeshift studio, and hammering away at their ideas until they bent something that resembled album. They did it this way in the early years, when they recorded in a basement at Ares’ parents’ house in Versailles, and they did it this way in 2020, when, under lockdown in Paris, they descended on the Louvre Museum to record Alpha Zulu. It was always in Phoenix’s sights, Branco says, to record somewhere so rich in cultural history. “When we walk down the street and see a nice building, personally I always think it’s unfair – we should be there,” he says with a wry smile. “We avoid recording studios, because they’re always very, very” – he gestures around the cold, impeccably designed studio we’re talking about right now – “boring”. As it happened, he knew someone who worked at the Louvre. “A long time ago, I was in a yoga class – and I was the worst yoga in the world, because I’m not that flexible,” recalls Branco. In the classroom, she befriended the woman who would later become director of the Louvre’s decorative arts department. When the band was looking for a studio, he called her and it turned out that he was looking for artists to do residencies at the museum. “In yoga, you know – it’s eternal, friendship.” Recording at the museum provided “the right kind of pressure,” says Mars. During recording breaks, they wandered the museum, looking at Napoleon’s giant golden throne and eavesdropping on staff union gossip. they were given tours of restoration studios and demonstrations about the minutiae of conserving artifacts. “We witnessed all the people working on very small details of restoring things – using wood from this area, [giving] attention to detail in something that almost no one will see,” Branko says. “The world was collapsing and some were trying to find the exact pigment to retouch paintings, spending, say, a month on it. We saw that it was the right thing to do, even if it was absurd. It was very inspiring.” Kicking it… Phoenix play the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, ​​2022. Photo: Adela Loconte/Rex/Shutterstock Landing at the Louvre to record an album is, perhaps, almost comically French. From an English-speaking perspective, the Phoenix seem to provide a kind of shorthand for modern French culture, given their penchant for skinny pants and sweaters and their love of lyrics that combine the sensual and the gastronomic. I ask if they think there is any truth to the talk, propagated by writers like Michel Houellebecq, that French culture is in decline – and if they think a French band could still make inroads the way Phoenix and Daft Punk did in the 2000s. “Every political cycle, France has an existential crisis – I’m going to be a politician, it’s okay,” Mars says, looking at Mazzalai, who has slumped in his seat. “He’s worried.” Anything that tries to stoke fear of the decline of French culture, Mars says, is “click bait.” “I think Houellebecq is taking a very easy route that will make him sell books,” he says. For Phoenix, a band that operates largely outside of France, their Frenchness is constantly reaffirmed. “In Arkansas, where we were four days ago, you are constantly reminded of yours [being] French, because they hear your accent and sometimes people have never seen a European.” Adds Branco: “We’re in pop music and France has always been a kind of third-world country, if I may say so, at that level. At the level of literature, theater, France was at the top – but [in pop] we are in a different world where we are somewhat outsiders, without losing power. I’m sure if someone great comes from France, it will have a big impact – like, who would have imagined that Korean music was popular worldwide. as, 10 years ago it was impossible to imagine. Now anything is possible, which is great.” Sign up for Within Saturday The only way to get…