Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

revz

Wikipedia Said...
Phoenix is a grammy award winning, alternative rock band from Versailles, France, founded by Thomas Mars, Deck D'Arcy, Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz.

Beginnings
Vocalist Thomas Mars, bassist Deck d'Arcy, and guitarist Chris Mazzalai started as a garage band based out of Mars' house in the suburbs of Paris. In 1995, Laurent Brancowitz, Mazzalai's older brother, permanently joined the band on guitar after the end of the short-lived band Darlin' he formed with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (who together became Daft Punk). The group got their touring start on the French bar circuit doing Hank Williams and Prince covers. Two years later the band took on the name Phoenix and pressed 500 copies of a single on their own label, Ghettoblaster. Shortly after, they were signed to the Paris-based Source Records. Phoenix became well acquainted with labelmates Air when they acted as their backing band on several U.K. TV appearances. They were the backing band for a remix of Air's "Kelly Watch the Stars" single. Soon after, Phoenix released their 2000 debut album United.

Wolgang Amadeus Phoenix is the 5th album released by Phoenix, on the 25th of May 2009.

Lisztomania - The first song on the album, and quite a good opening in my opinion. Energetic and upbeat, pretty sure the song is about love with lyrics such as 'This love's for gentlemen only' and 'Think less but see it grow; know how to let it go'. Strange name for a song, according to songmeanings.net, possibly to do with the composer Franz Liszt!? Anyway, potentially a good song, and feels quite summery! (if a song can?).

1901 - This song introduces itself with a Distortion-y/synth sound. I like it, from what I can gather the song is about a break-up, lyrics such as 'Like we did it over summer long' and 'Girlfriend, oh your girlfriend is drifting away'....are giving me that impression! Quite lively as well, I like it.

Fences - More laid back than the first 2, again has a quite nice feel to it, thinking i'm starting to like these. Quite a chilled out vibe, relaxed tempo, pity I haven't any idea what it might mean!

Love Like a Sunset - A 7:39 long song...with a 6:10 long intro! That was strange, some nice parts in the instrumental but some weird parts too, such as the pan-flutes/pipes that come in halfway through and the synth near the end of it that sounds like an airplane doing a nose-dive....Ending was alright, hmm not too sure about that one.

Lasso - Intro with drums, sounds good! Another fast-paced song, improvement after that near-8-minute drag of a last song. Chorus is good. Solid song, shortest on the album too, nothing special but good enough!

Rome - Intro isn't as filled with synth as all the other songs. Just hit me as well this guy kinda sounds like Julian Casablancas. Quite a lot! I like this song, slower paced but a bit more raw than the other tracks. Still haven't been necessarily blown away by anything.

Countdown (Sick for The Big Sun) - I've head this song somewhere before. Can't quite put my finger on it. Some quite catchy parts, nice sound to it. About growing up I think. Lyrics seem to push it that way 'Do you remember when 21 years was old?' was a solid enough track.

Girlfriend - Wait a minute, To me this sounds IDENTICAL to the song before it? Maybe that's where i heard it, also realised this is the song off the current O2 ad so that could also be it! I do like this song, nice rhythm to it.
One of the better ones.

Armistice - Last song, carries a similar message to many of the songs on the album. Finishes on an upbeat song, I like this as well, good finish. Sounds familiar though...


Overall: A decent album, although I felt a LOT of the songs sounded similar, to the point it was getting quite repetitive. Would be a nice album to throw on if there was yourself and a few of your mates sitting on a beach, relaxing in the sun with a few drinks. In my opinion, not really anything special and would give it a
Rating - 3/5 (maybe a 2.5 if it wasn't summer) and would not really recommend to buy it.
The highlights would probably be 1901, Lasso & Girlfriend. If you listen to those songs and really enjoy them then you probably would like the rest of the album!

revz

Decided to give reviewing a try since I'm always looking for new music to listen to, hopefully someone else will give it a shot now!
Decided to do this album since my friend yesterday said "The whole album was amazing" so gave it a listen, and wasn't overly impressed.
And also the 'song off the O2 ad' is getting quite a bit of attention so thought I might try my hand at it

Comments / Constructive criticism welcome!

MilanPan!c

Ok.

The most important thing about starting something new is passion. If you have passion to review stuff, then by all means, keep if up.

But.

Your review wasn't particularly great.

People want to believe that reviewers opinion is well informed and your opinions were clearly fairly uninformed.

I would suggest the next time you review and album you lookariund for other reviews of the same record. That helps you learn about the artist and also helps you know if you have anything to add with your opinion.

I would also make sure you check out a more detailed history of the band and maybe even listen to their other records, so you can talk about the bands progression (or digression as may be the case).

Also, try and avoid saying things like, "maybe" and "I don't know". Why would I listen to your opinions if you are clueless?

None of that is mean to be mean!!!! Like I said at the beginning, if your passionate about reviewing, then keep it up! But it's not something you can do casually. Do your research, find a niche and enjoy!

Edit:

5 minutes with google and I found an interview with Phoenix in which they say:

"Lisztomania is the first song we finished for Wolfgnag Amadeus Phoenix. It was the first one good enough. It was inspired by the movie American Gigolo, Franz liszt biography, the great Gatsby and the idea that we would play it at Musikladen (an old german TV show that is on french TV all the time these days)"

Now if you google all the things they claime influend it, you might be able to offer some insight as to what that song is about. This is just a quick example of how to inform with reviews, that'll help you keep people interested.

revz

True, I probably should've started out on an album I was passionate about but wanted to try one from an unbiased view as I hadn't listened to them before. Wasn't really too into it, but yeah all taken into consideration!
Doing a bit more research is a definite if I do one again

MilanPan!c

revz wrote: »

True, I probably should've started out on an album I was passionate about but wanted to try one from an unbiased view as I hadn't listened to them before. Wasn't really too into it, but yeah all taken into consideration!
Doing a bit more research is a definite if I do one again

Good man, don't be discouraged. It's really really hard to do original research, but... That's not the name of the game.. The name of the game is writing interesting informed critiques that provide insight to interested folks.

Start out with writing stuff for a known audience; read reviews in publications/websites you trust and like. See how the successful reviews help you understand the artists, their music and the context in which it was made.

If you can take all of that on board and still want to write then you can suceed. There's a lot more opportunities than good writers.

But it's hard-ass work.