It was the summer before college when I first got my grubby high-school fingers on a copy of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I was technically a year late to the party — Wolfgang was released in 2009 — but I more than made up for my delayed start by consuming copious quantities of it in a short span of time. I’m not exaggerating when I say I spun that disc front-to-back four or five times a day: Wolfgang was the only shoe to match my carefree foot. And between the last month of senior year and freshman orientation I wore the shit out of that sole. The album was the culmination of Phoenix’s career: a perfect pop record that brought home a well-deserved Grammy. If truth be told I wanted the band to surrender and allow the world to proclaim Wolfgang as the most joyous swan song of all-time.
Instead we got Bankrupt!, an album that follows the exact blueprint Phoenix used to map out Wolfgang to lesser results. Both albums begin with a bang, feature a multi-part instrumental at track 4, and have sweet spots that lie between tracks 7 and 9. But whereas Wolfgang was the party-animal-community-college older brother, Bankrupt! went to prep school and studied abroad only to return home and brag about his lavish foreign lifestyle.
The exception to this new-found nobility is “Entertainment,“ which — with its thunderous robotic drums and Strokes-y guitars — would sound great sandwiched between any two Wolfgang tracks. Unfortunately, the rest of the album resembles the second song, “The Real Thing,” relying heavily on the “cool” sounds of ’80s synths to pass in place of actual great tunes. The biggest disappointment, however, is the six-minute instrumental title track. Whereas the two-part “Love Like a Sunset” felt like the belle of the Wolfgang ball, “Bankrupt!” feels forced, clunky, and completely out of place.
Bankrupt! isn’t a total bitter pill, though. “S.O.S. in Bel Air” goes down easy even with its pressing chorus, and “Trying to Be Cool” is effortlessly catchy. “Chloroform,” “Don’t,” and “Bourgeois” find Phoenix in full stride, yet the trio of tracks is regrettably buried in the album’s second half. Plus even “Chloroform” banks too heavily on its booming bass and brassy synth line, and “Don’t” clunks through its chorus. “Bourgeois” is the only ballad where Phoenix hit their mark, and it’s the only ballad the Bankrupt! needed. It would have been a satisfying close, but the band opts to toss in the throwaway track “Oblique City” to end the album.
Throughout Bankrupt! Thomas Mars’ vocals sound as silky smooth and lozenge-soaked as ever, but even for Phoenix the accompanying instrumentation sounds too polished. The whole experience reminds me of the unrelatable Watch The Throne; Bankrupt! functions as a backseat glimpse into Phoenix’s first-class lifestyle, and I can’t imagine many listeners feeling anything but detached to its contents. But it is summer now, and no one’s going to get that knit-picky about the background music while tossing bean bags. Or in Phoenix’s case, tanning on a yacht, or something.
Bankrupt!