Album review: Various Artists

Facts about this album:
* Paris' Phoenix are Christian Mazzalai, Deck d'Arcy, Laurent Brancowitz, Thomas Mars

Album review:
Post ‘Two Doors Down’, Phoenix’s trick of plundering the less-cool bits of the ’80s – wine-bar funk, soft-focus pop-soul – means their new album, due in May, sounds weirdly current. In the meantime there’s this languid mixtape, which is interesting less for the light it throws on the band’s influences, and more for the way it puts you inside the heads of teen hipsters in France. ‘Love Theme From Kiss’ was apparently a track they used to listen to with Thomas Bangalter (who later formed Daft Punk). Other well-judged picks include ‘I’ve Been Trying’ by Curtis Mayfield’s pre-solo band The Impressions and ‘I Am The Cosmos’ by Big Star’s Chris Bell, one of the great ‘lost tracks’ and as turbulent and conflicted as you’d expect from a gay, Christian heroin addict.

Luke Lewis

More on this artist:
Phoenix website

7 out of 10