PHOENIX - Ti Amo

The music of Phoenix has always been as pure and delightful as fior di latte ice cream. Perhaps it became even more so with the shift from "It's Never Been Like That" to "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix", when guitars ceded the stage to synthesizers. And it's nothing new for the French band to weave in elements from other cultures and unfamiliar contexts either. They did it with the Orient on "Bankrupt!", with classical music on the aforementioned "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix", and now they're doing it with Italy. Strip away the content, though, and the result remains unchanged. Phoenix's music has always sounded the same, whether it was quoting Mozart and Liszt or showing samurai in the lead single's video.

"Ti Amo", true to expectations, has nothing Italian about it whatsoever. It's the new Phoenix album that sounds like every other recent Phoenix album, except this time it namedrops Battiato, Lucio (Dalla or Battisti, who cares which), Sanremo and ice cream. Only through superhuman restraint did they avoid throwing in pizza, mandolins and the mafia. "Hey baby, let me show you how to win my Sanremo Festival", Mars sings on the second track. And that's how the tribute Phoenix are capable of paying to Italy is born and dies in one breath. They even try singing a few words in the language of Dante, and their good fortune — they're well aware of it — is that if an Italian tries to sing a song in broken or trite English, he comes off as inept; but if a foreigner strings together a couple of phrases in shoddy Italian (because writing a whole song would really be too demanding a commitment, and far too sincere a tribute), he comes off as cool. Not only that, he even risks having Italians — used to lingering on the margins of the international music scene — thank him for it, bowing with a pinch of flattery thrown in. "Non posso vivere. Troppo bisogno di te" is the aching message that flies from one phone to another, from who knows where all the way to Hollywood, on the closing track "Telefono".

Amid this jumble of clichés there's even room for "spocchiosità" (smugness) — a word far too Italian for Mars to ever grasp. Listening to "Ti Amo", in fact, it's hard to relate to or feel even a trace of empathy for someone singing about missing his wife — an award-winning director and the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola — about speedboat jaunts and shopping among the glittering storefronts of Via Veneto. It was a thousand times better when Rome was talked about in subtler terms, comparing the state of its ruins to that of a love affair slowly decaying ("Rome" from "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix", 2009).

Phoenix have always been shamelessly flirtatious, and that's precisely where part of their strength has lain. The problem is that, aside from the attitude, in recent years — beyond the shift in direction already mentioned — the way the Versailles band winks at its audience hasn't changed all that much: Strokes-esque guitars layered with synth phrasing, sketching out danceable, catchy, instantly singable rhythms and melodies; lysergic, instrumental (or near-instrumental) digressions that add more varied shades, lending the album a light touch of complexity. They did it on "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix", with the studio version of "Lisztomania" or, more decisively, with "Love Like Sunset"; they did it on "Bankrupt!", with the title track; they do it now, in the tail end of "Fior Di Latte" or in the hazy "Via Veneto", which takes on an almost chillwave quality. Truth be told, "Ti Amo" lacks that purely instrumental track Phoenix are so fond of, which actually works in the album's favor, making it even lighter and more fluid than its already brief runtime (just over half an hour) would suggest.

"Ti Amo", in short, confirms yet again who Phoenix really are: supremely skilled architects of dance-pop hits (and there are some on this latest effort too: the lovely "J-Boy" and the sweet/erotic "Fior Di Latte" above all) who don't know how — and maybe don't even want — to push any further. They write "Ti amo" on walls, they get it tattooed on their skin, but when they talk about Italy they have no interest in immersing themselves in its native culture and music, nor in finding a place that might say something about its people; they don't cross-check local guides, they don't ask the people who actually live there for suggestions. They're like students dashing off an essay, barely skimming the topic just to say they did it. All you need to do is sit down at the restaurant facing the Colosseum and order some pasta all'Alfredo, then kiss your greasy fingertips and exclaim: "belisssimo". Nothing wrong with that, except that I'd rather not take a seat at that particular restaurant's table.

Grazie a Martina Monnanni

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30/06/2017