IT’S NEVER BEEN LIKE THAT - PHOENIX
On its third full-length, Parisian quartet Phoenix has created its most immediately endearing album, condensing its members’ talent for complex pop music into 10 concise nuggets of rock candy. This is the kind of record the Strokes and countless other newfangled pop/rock groups have been trying to make over the first half of the decade. But nobody’s done it with such effortless flair as Phoenix. The band is capable of composing elaborate orchestral music and much poppier fare (”Too Young,” from the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack). But here, the group concentrates on the visceral, and the results shine through in deceptively simple, richly textured songs like “One Time Too Many” and the exuberant rockers “Long Distance Call” and “Courtesy Laughs.”–Billboard
