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Phoenix up against the Wall
New album
Paris
01/06/2006 -
Thomas Mars: Yes, that's right. This time round, we decided to go off and put a bit of distance between us and our usual studio in Versailles. The idea with this album was to take a completely different approach to recording than we'd done previously. I think the way you actually go about making an album has a major influence on the final result. Worrying about creature comforts or sticking to your usual habits is the enemy of creativity! We opted for Berlin because we knew the city really well, but the main reason was we found this incredible studio located on a river bank. It's this absolutely huge complex which used to house the East German radio studios. Anyway, we ended up spending about 20 hours a day there, working amongst what I can only describe as the vestiges of a Germany that's now dying a death. There we were just the four of us, shut away on our own, far from home. I think the atmosphere of being in a sort of 'no man’s land' definitely influenced the album.
It’s Never Been Like That is not as sober and restrained as your previous albums. There seems to be a lot more passion involved…
That was very much a deliberate choice on our part. When we were working on our last album, Alphabetical, we came to realise that with each new take we just got better and better on a technical level. And we ended up honing the album to perfection in the studio for a whole two years. But this time round, it was just the opposite. We felt as if something essential was getting lost with each new take, something was collapsing on a sound level. So what we did before going into the studio was all four of us got together and rehearsed, then we recorded everything together on the spot. That was a pretty new way of working for us – and we found that quite often the first take was the best!
Did you feel any particular influences or albums haunting the vast spaces of the German studios?
You know, the recording of an album is a bit of a selfish moment. You're very much centred on yourself. What we did say to ourselves this time round was that we wanted to be completely truthful. We knew we wanted to make an album that would be less hermetic and more personal than the last ones. We decided that there'd be hardly any instruments on the album, but that each of us would have a major role to play in the space. Those were the guiding lines behind our approach and they counted a lot more than any influences. When influences do come into play things get a bit political. As there are four of us in the band we each bring up our own musical influences and try and win the others over!
Did you ever get into heated discussions about things?
There were a lot of major discussions! And that was basically because when we went to Berlin we went out there empty-handed with literally no music and no lyrics. We gave ourselves three months to wrap up the album. And I can tell you three months of living on a diet of potatoes every lunchtime in the cafeteria was quite enough. It started out as a bit of an exotic experience, but I'm not sure we could have stuck it much longer than that! Besides, the biggest risk with music is going on too much…
One of the impressions one has about Phoenix is that you like to control everything, from the music you make to the image you put across…
I'd say what we do is try and put ourselves in listeners' shoes. We try and do things we'd like to hear ourselves if we were the ones out there buying the records. We think it makes a lot more sense making something artisanal and personal, than making something professional that's actually quite distant from us. We like the amateur side of music. Anything's possible if you work outside the box – otherwise you have to play by the rules!
How did you end up meeting the Coppolas? I hear you actually made an on-screen appearance in Sofia Coppola's new film Marie-Antoinette.
We actually met Roman Coppola through Air - we were their backing band for a few gigs. What happened was we were kicking around with a couple of months to spare in the run-up to the release of our first album, so we took advantage of our break. But I'm not sure that Air fans really appreciated our music! (Laughs). After that, I went on to sing on the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's film Virgin Suicides, under the pseudonym Gordon Tracks. As for Marie-Antoinette we make a brief cameo playing ourselves - with big wigs! Laurent and Christian composed one single track for the film: a guitar number in counterpoint.
What is it about Versailles? The town's spawned a whole stack of musicians: Air, Étienne de Crécy, Klub des Loosers…
I don't know. We're a bit younger than Air and although we ended up hanging out in the same places they did, we never actually met them at that point because we came along a few years afterwards. I think basically Versailles is the sort of place where boredom sets in quickly. There's not much to do there on a Saturday night, so we'd get together and play music. That was our buzz, our way of having a bit of freedom!
You're currently in the midst of an extensive international tour. How's it going?
Great! We're all totally wound up and overexcited! When we first started out people coming along to the gigs didn't know the words to songs from the new album because it hadn't come out at that point. But now it's wilder than we could ever have imagined! This time round, we're playing a lot of concerts in venues that are on a human scale and that's been brilliant. We've just got back from Germany and we'll be heading off to Japan, the U.S. and Scandinavia before finishing things up in France at the end of November. We hope that'll give our French fans time to learn the words!
European tour dates throughout June and July 2006
Nicolas Dambre
Translation : Julie Street
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