Phoenix, not at The Phoenix Concert Theatre this time 
Quietly sitting at home on Saturday, out of nowhere I suddenly found myself on route to Them Sound Academy to catch Phoenix. All but a moment’s hesitation passed through my head before jumping at the chance. This is a huge buzz-band right now and it seemed like I was the last to see them live.
We arrived at the venue, popped upstairs and caught the end of Holy Fuck’s performance. This was an unfortunate turn of events — showing up late for HF — but I have luckily seen the band numerous times (search them out on this site). We rocked out to a couple final tunes and then awaited the headliners.
A considerable amount of time seemed to elapse between the two bands’ sets. However long it actually was, I had a great chance to catch up with some friends that just so happened to be at the show. That’s Toronto for you! It’s tough to *not* bump into someone at a show these days!
Soon enough, the lights dropped and the crowd below got whipped into a frenzy. The Sound Academy was packed; the reasons why would soon become evident.
The band kicked the show off on a most-recognizable foot with “Lisztomania” — the bomb-drop of a single from earlier this year. The ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ track went down like a Led Zeppelin (if you’ll allow the reference!). The crowd was completely amped up now.
I’ll be completely honest: I didn’t really know the band going into the show. The extent of which I knew them was from what I had heard on The BBC, the band’s MySpace page and the Cadillac television commercial that features “1901.” It’s rare that I end up being “that guy” — the one who only knows the big singles — but I was a full realization of my concert-going antithesis on this particular evening. All designations and labels aside, I would have been foolish to miss the show; I was surrounded by “hardcores” that helped me break down the setlist and properly discover this band.
I quickly learned the names of many Phoenix songs played that night – many of which appear across all 4 of the band’s albums. I had no idea that their catalog is already this deep. This is today’s musical landscape: you could catch wind of a show featuring what you thought was a new band, only to arrive and see thousands of people celebrating a rich, established catalog of songs. The term ”mainstream” may not apply any longer, but the point on this night was that a wealth of people gathered without caring about what “mainstream” even means anymore.
Standout tracks:
“Funky Squaredance” (off the band’s first record: ‘United’) carried a great, edgey dance-rock vibe that featured Thomas Mars‘ vocals shuffled through a heavy vocoder effect. The crunching, progressive riffs in this tune completely caught my attention. Here’s a vid to give you an idea!
Watching this video again reminds of just how awesome Thomas Hedlund is on the drumkit. The guy hits HARD. I mean, he would often stand up between hits just so he could come down harder on the skins. It was impressive. That being said, he apparently isn’t a proper member of the band…???
“Too Young” (again, off ‘United’) had a few of my friends rockin’ in the aisles. Great tune! Again, it is off their first record and my friends were eating it up!
The band obviously got called out for an encore. They returned and proceeded to play a really fantastic mellow, guitar/vox tune called “Everything Is Everything” to start off that encore. It’s really amazing: when you listen to this track, to think that this band is from Versailles, France is quite staggering. The vocals makes one think that this band is English, through and through. Well, they counted several songs in via the French “Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre!”…so, this is a moot point!
The band shut the show down with “1901.” This was an obvious choice and to not do so would have been a tremendous error! Mars announced that the song would be the last of the night and when it appeared to come to an eventual close — with the crowd being thanked — the track got extended. The “Fallin’ Fallinnnn’…” became a motif shouted from the crow that resounded throughout the venue. The band jammed the track out. Mars called for the lighting crew to bring the house lights up and proceeded to say “Thank you thank you thank you” to the crowd, now in full sight. The crowd kept repeating “Fallin’ Fallin’” while Mars announced: “This stage is yours! Let the people on stage security!” From there, a slew of people from the crowd slowly filled the stage to rock out the closing finale of the song, with the band. It was quite the moment to witness live.
It was a party!
Overall, this show was an eye-opener. Despite the occasional off-key guitar note, the show was incredible. Between the great songs, inspired lighting and crowd involvement, I was given a fantastic, proper introduction to this band. There were moments of outright rock and there were moments of lush atmosphere. To further the latter of the two descriptions , there was one point where we looked around on stage and caught Mars laying down with his head against his vocal monitor — taking in the textures being created by his band around him. Hey, if he was *that* into what he was hearing, so was the crowd
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