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Beyond containing the band's best, most efficient songwriting, the album also stands apart from the first three studio albums by projecting a cool punch that is unforced.
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Alternative PressWolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is an absolute blast, rich in ringing guitar and euphoric synths but thankfully light on fromage and staid rehashes. [Jul 2009, p.130]
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The bottom falls out of Wolfie's second half --'Rome' declines, 'Countdown' never reaches orbit, and 'Girlfriend,' no--but closer "Armistice" beats fresh out of the dryer on golden Versailles pogo. Merveilleux!
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The group has polished its '60s-rock-revivalist sound to near perfection, but keeps expanding its aural palette, experimenting with layered rhythms and sonic textures.
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Thomas Mars sings with a casual amiability so hard to resist that it helps carry Phoenix through some of the less immediate material on the album's back half.
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It’s an approximation of what perfection might mean, which is: precise, lean, deliberate. There’s not a wasted moment here, and not one moment overstays it’s welcome, which from a bunch of aristocrats (I get) is pretty frickin’ rich.
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Phoenix doesn’t need to be groundbreaking to reward us with a joyous, endlessly fun album that should sit comfortably in the top 10 on everybody’s list.
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Aside from the incredible sonics though, Phoenix's real triumph here is successfully contorting the songs into ever more elaborate and unconventional arrangements without losing any of their classy pop impact.
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Whilst Wolfgang Amadeus... is clunker-free, with high points from start to finish, allow me to abandon my critical faculties and gush about 'Love Like a Sunset Part 1', as this instrumental is by far the most incredible moment of the album and also quite possibly the best thing they've ever done.
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It doesn’t hurt that they’ve made their most pleasing record yet. It’s slick but not stupid, the results of a traditional rock band working closely with a producer of electronic music, one which merges the clean lines of dance music with the grandeur of a crack studio band well-heeled in ’70s pop and ’90s indie rock.
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Though the album trips lightly from slinky roller-skate jams ('Fences') to near Brit-rocky rave-ups ('Lasso'), the underlying vibe is both retro and somehow outside of time--like a memory made sweeter than the real thing it recalls.
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FilterJust as you're really gearing up for a night on the town with Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix as your sidekick, it ends abruptly. There's only one remedy: Play it again. And Again, And again. [Spring 2009, p.94]
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Essentially, the record finds Phoenix doing what they do supremely well – danceable indie-pop with touches of shoegaze guitar and ambient electro.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, a truly marvelous album title if ever there was one, is danceable but only a little disco, synth-driven but clubland averse, an easy record to like but a more difficult one to love.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a slender, fat-free affair, all Gallic swerve and subtle swagger. This may well be the album to broaden their fan-base wider then the fashionable glitterati.
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The real star of the show isn’t the often-bloodless figure of Thomas Mars, it’s the brilliantly detailed production, centred around the dovetailing drum and guitar chops, best heard via headphones for the full stroboscopic effect.
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Very few dance albums are, and in the end, that’s what Phoenix created--a dance album, possibly the most enjoyable one since "Oracular Spectacular."
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The album's lyrics don’t always make sense, but then again, English isn’t their first language, and words aren’t the point here, the danceable beats and moody ambience are.
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They're pleasure-pushers, filling tunes with riffs, phrases, and beats a five-year-old could love. But, on Wolfgang, those same songs are unfulfilled--and this band wouldn't have it any other way. There's beauty in a sunset. Phoenix are wringing it out.
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With Wolfgang, they’ve finally come into their own, releasing the strongest disc of their career without compromising a thing.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix showcases a band that has only gotten better with each album.
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Q MagazineIt may be oversimplifying to invoke the spirit of Radiohead, but this could be Phoenix's "Ok Computer" and "Kid A" rolled into one. [Jun 2009, p.130]
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The 10 songs are sleek and clean, as if the Strokes had kept pushing a little longer and maybe bought some old disco records.
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These arch Frenchmen make precision-tooled pop that somehow retains a sense of urgency and playfulness--an impressive balancing act consistently slam-dunked by effortlessly ingratiating choruses.
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Laced throughout all of it are generous, wide-eyed melodies of a kind that makes for swooning sighs and curious feelings of instant nostalgia.
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Phoenix deal with an American genre on its own terms--and in its own language--far better than most homegrown bands.
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UncutThese Varsailles dwellers make records that initially seem like delicately generic powerpop, but gradually emerge as vivid, bittersweet epiphanies. [Jun 2009, p.99]
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The band plainly “rocks” and on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix they have perfectly translated that ability onto their proper recorded output--for better or worse.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 176 out of 189
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Mixed: 9 out of 189
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Negative: 4 out of 189
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Jun 27, 2011
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Mar 20, 2011
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JakeWFeb 2, 2010Am I the only person who doesn't get this album? I really want to like it, everyone else seems to, but I just find it... dull?