Phoenix - Alpha Zulu

 

First album in five years from the Grammy-winning French band!

Grammy Award-winning French band Phoenix returns with their next full length, Alpha Zulu. This follows their 2020 single "Identical,' which went No. 1 at AAA radio, from the motion picture On The Rocks. The new album was recorded during the height of the pandemic in Paris, at the iconic Louvre museum.

Alpha Zulu is everything Phoenix does best: effortlessly catchy melodies married with always-innovative production, resulting in what is destined to be one of 2022's albums of the year. Indeed, Alpha Zulu — the band's first album since 2017's critically acclaimed record Ti Amo — is an immediate reminder of what has made Phoenix one of the most beloved artists of the last two decades, reinforcing the band's enduring — and continued — influence on pop culture.

The album's first single "Tonight" is a duet with Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig in a Phoenix first: they've never had another vocalist on a track before. The result is simply sublime. The video, directed by Oscar Boyson, was shot in Tokyo and Paris (partly in the band's own studio in Musée des Arts Décoratifs), with Ezra and Phoenix inhabiting similar spaces in wildly different parts of the world.

There's a new looseness here for Phoenix, a clash of emotions, styles and eras borne from the mad stylistic incubator that is the Musée des Arts Décoratifs: "The Only One," with its blissful rain-drop percussion, clashes against the pummeling, almost techno-strafed "All Eyes on Me"; there's a focus on "negative space" — a very Zdarian concept echoed in the white walls around the museum's exhibits — and a sense of pure romance, albeit tinged with a mature understanding of how precious that feeling becomes with age. "My Elixir," a lonely, distant song with a sweetly rinky-dink beat that has the air of the karaoke sung in an empty bar. "Tell me anywhere is home," Thomas pleads in the song: "Can we go home?" He was thinking about how on Ti Amo, Phoenix finally said "I love you" — "but in a different language," he admits.

Now living in an increasingly apocalyptic-seeming US, the situation called for directness. It was then that Thomas wrote the album's only song that wasn't composed in the studio. His bandmates sent him a long loop with no chorus and asked him to record a stream of consciousness. The result is the album's standout track, "Winter Solstice." It might be Phoenix's saddest song, a percussion-free rumination that gradually pulses from dark into light. "Turn the lights on / Find me a narrative / Something positive / This requiem played a few times before," Thomas sings helplessly.

Phoenix are set to perform at festivals like Primavera Sound (Barcelona), We Love Green (Paris) and Austin City Limits (Texas) and will embark on a full headline tour in the U.S., U.K. and E.U. in Sept 2022. The band has seen more than 1.5B+ streams across their catalog, and have previously headlined Coachella, Governors Ball, Primavera Sound, Austin City Limits, and more. They've performed on Saturday Night Live, and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, among others.

 

 

1. Alpha Zulu

2. Tonight feat. Ezra Koenig

3. The Only One

4. After Midnight

5. Winter Solstice

6. Season 2

7. Artefact

8. All Eyes On Me

9. My Elixir

10. Identical

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