the right side of reflection

French band Phoenix have always been a reliable source of infectious pop songs in a guilty-pleasure sort of way for me. But their latest album, the fantastically named Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix released about five months ago, is proving to be a more than serviceable listen, if only for the equally fantastically named leadoff song “Lisztomania”, which is quite easily my favorite pop song of 2009. Part of why I’m starting to like Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix a lot more now – at first I thought it sounded a tad overproduced, especially with the two electro-pop numbers (“Fences”, “Love Like A Sunset”) the band threw right in the middle of the mix – is that singer Thomas Mars seems to sound more wizened and correspondingly less lovelorn than on their previous albums, singing in a slightly timeworn manner I think perhaps anyone who has ever felt caught in a rut can readily identify with; even when Mars indulges a little and goes soft-rock on our asses (“Rome”), the bleary-eyed sentimentality (romantic and not disgusting yet?) still kinda stick somehow. But it all comes down to the catchy and insanely melodic “Lisztomania” really, as you hang on to its ineffable lyrics (“Follow, misguide, stand still, disgust, discourage”) like a sacred code.