This makes 3/5 of GAPDY we’ve covered this year…
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[6.14]
David Sheffieck: A sparkling confection of a track; it almost doesn’t matter that the chorus is barely a half-step up from the verses since there are enough little hooks and flourishes to fill a song twice the length. Which is also its problem: even at four minutes this lacks the expansiveness and flow of Phoenix’s better songs, coming across as skillful but unmemorable despite its well-buffed sheen. It does the work and vanishes without leaving a trace.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Have these masters of the nonplussed been listening to Charly Bliss? The chunkiness of the electronic and guitar bed is most welcome. What the hell “J-Boy” is about besides announcing itself as a robust new Phoenix single is the question I shouldn’t ask; good songs are their own answers, and “J-Boy” doesn’t offer any.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: A bunch of disco balls, “ooh-la-laaa” phrasings, and a prevailing feeling of empty gestures. I’ve often been told that Phoenix was one of those rock bands who people swore could sound believable. Here, these guys don’t sound like the buy the song they’re trying to get out.
[4]
Thomas Inskeep: This doesn’t sound like anything of recent vintage that I’ve heard recently, so yay for that. It also does some cribbing from 1983 American funk records (hello, Linn drum!), which provides the underpinning for Thomas Mars to sing over, and it’s overall quite synthy. No complaints here.
[7]
Ryo Miyauchi: Bankrupt! had Phoenix set aside soft rock to play with shards of glass like they were rejecting their hipster cool after a decade of grooming it to existence. But “J-Boy” sounds even more like a carcass of 2000s Phoenix with Thomas Mars moaning from the rubble, with words more oblique and hostile than before. A once-polite band taking this antagonistic voice isn’t likely to win new ears, though the fact they’re not trying to do so marks a curious little phase for them.
[6]
William John: Phoenix’s lyrics occasionally take on transcendent, aphoristic qualities, but mostly sound garbled, as though they’ve been fed through a Google translator and then back again. Thomas Mars has become a master of delivering such words in a laconic, knowing way, but his phrasing serves mostly as accompaniment to the main course: a head rush of an arrangement, glittering and spiralling most incandescently at the chorus. It becomes difficult to pay much attention to what Mars is saying when monstrous, clacking drums and that subtle, ascending synthesiser are at hand.
[8]
Crystal Leww: Phoenix’s new album Ti Amo has reportedly been in the works since 2014, but if you told me that it was written in the Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix cycle, I wouldn’t be surprised. This would usually be a diss, but for Phoenix, it’s fine. Their music has never felt particularly trend chasing, instead choosing to groove into the twinkle of the synth and Thomas Mars’ weird nasally voice that manages to work for this style. “J-Boy” is business-as-usual for Phoenix, and honestly, for them, BAU still works great.
[6]