Review Summary: Having the two hits at the beginning of the album will lose many listeners, but it's absolutely worth staying for.
Phoenix has long been regarded as one of the finest indie pop/rock groups on the market, and while many of their works have been well known before this, nothing they’ve done before this has quite lived up to just how fantastic this album is. Thomas Mars’s silky smooth voice glides over the electronic beats laid down before him on songs like Lisztomania and 1901, two of their most recognizable songs whether you knew it had come from them or not. I can recall discovering this album and thinking That’s where this is from!
This is the album you find when you trace back the roots of its derivative bands like Two Door Cinema Club and Passion Pit. The contrast that is received from the electronic beats and the relaxing vocals courtesy of Mars simply work.
The album begins with the duo hits Lisztomania and 1901, the most memorable of any of the other songs presented here, and having the two hits at the beginning like this loses many ears after this point. The song Fences is slightly patience-testing due to its repetitiveness, and takes the album in a turn in an unexpected direction. Then we have the instrumental interlude Love Like a Sunset Part I which consists of droning ambient synths and cutting soundbites before a beat is introduced and fools the listener with the climax and fades into Love Like a Sunset Part II, the vocal half of the interlude. In terms of the consistency of the album’s sound, this interlude is a barrier between not far different sounds which makes it stick out like a sore thumb to me.
As far as lyrics go, the separation that the interlude makes is that in Lisztomania, romanticism was something he was not discussing, where the second half of the LP begins with Lasso which picks up the theme of love with marriage and making the point that forever is a long, long time. There seems to be an internal conflict with what is allowed to discuss in the lyrics.
