Pop Quiz: Phoenix

Pop Quiz: Phoenix

Aidin Vaziri | In just over half an hour, "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix," the excellent new album by the four Frenchmen who form Phoenix, provides all the streamlined pop music you could possibly need to get through the summer. The group is probably best known here for its frequent appearances on Sofia Coppola's movie soundtracks (the group's singer Thomas Mars is her boyfriend and father of her child), but after a triumphant appearance on "Saturday Night Live" this year and a pair of irresistible singles, "1901" and "Lisztomania," all the hard work that went into making the new disc could pay off big time.


Christian Mazzalai of Phoenix
Q: Did you spend a long time working on this CD?
A: We saw two winters. Two summers. Two falls.
Q: Whoa. That's like five years. You were doing stuff the whole time?
A: Every day. No vacation. When we're writing music, there's not time for holiday. We don't go out at all. We are just into the music. Otherwise nothing happens.
Q: Do you usually go in and just do the songs you need, or do you write a billion things and then narrow it down later over a glass of wine?
A: It depends. On each album it's a totally different way of writing and producing. For this one, we wrote a thousand pieces of music.
Q: hat's not even possible because there are only 32 songs in the whole world.
A: It was really a thousand pieces. We counted. It was on our iTunes. I will show you my computer. Continue reading.