Photography by Pascal Textiera

Despite name-dropping Mozart and Franz Liszt, one would certainly be hard-pressed to discern any obvious classical currents on Phoenix’s new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and its lead single “Lisztomania”. And perhaps this is the French four-piece’s master plan; for a record whose cover art shows technicolor bombs about to explode, understated subversion hardly seems the point.  “Vandalism” is the word Thomas Mars initially employs in trying to explain the album’s off-kilter title and overarching ethos, comparing the act of affixing one’s own band to the surname of the composer-god to “a kid drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. It’s like pop art. You take culture and make it your own.”
     Vandalism, culture clash, chaos, contradiction, and brats — such words and concepts appear and reappear throughout Mars’ slightly fractured-English account of his band’s fourth album. Clad in faded leather boots, artfully torn blue jeans and collared shirt, the singer sat down with PLANET over soda at the sun-drenched hotel lounge of NYC’s Thompson LES to discuss the album, the importance of chaos and culture clash, tourism in Versailles, and the magic of fatherhood. (Mars and girlfriend Sofia Coppola welcomed daughter Romy in 2006.)

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1901 Alan Wilkis Remix