Rant and Rave: Bankrupt! by Phoenix

For the French quartet’s fifth album, the boys play as our French tour guide in your private plane as they take you around every club in Europe. The album tries its best to show us the sights perfectly, but we end up getting lost somewhere in Russia in the process. So, please make sure you’re buckled up, always be aware of the flashing lights, and be ready for synth-induced turbulence, because it’s going to be a very weird ride.

At our first stop, it seems to be a fun ride all the way to Ibiza. Opening track of the album, “Entertainment” starts us off on the right mood with infectious beats, precise vocals, and just an all around entertaining oriental foundation that could be the expected vibe for the next 40 minutes, a track that is a possible candidate in replacing the Chinese national anthem. But then the album slowly goes dim for the next couple of tracks, and you feel unsettled in your seat. The group might try to keep you comfortable by sending a tasty R&B influenced dish with “Trying to be Cool” which pops out of the album due to its sweet change in tempo, but as the album’s titular track “Bankrupt” takes hold of the flight and douses the party with a fresh pouring quality, we start to feel safe until the keyboards—ridiculous amounts of it—shifts us to the chaotic and disturbing tone. From this point, it all seems to be a “prescription” induced dream. But this is definitely not the one we ordered.

It might seem wrong to call these thirty-something rock stars boys underdeveloped, but as Bankrupt! provides further evidence, the album just seems elementary. Overall sounds of the record feel unintentional, scrappy, and exactly like those fifth grade “science” experiments outside the backyard – messy. The sound seems moody and astray as a pre-teen, but doesn’t show much room for improvement. Let us possibly give the benefit of the doubt, as the burning success of Wolfgang might still be too much heat for the guys who just finished touring for two and half years and to be placed back in the blistering spotlight to try and top their surprise masterpiece.

This “pressure” could also be a viable reason to why the band took such a swayed detour from their light-in-the-dark vibe to the complete opposite, sending listeners to a wild after-party in Amsterdam where everyone is having fun, but you find yourself scared and overwhelmed with the juggling bear on the unicycle, and blaring organs from the speakers, which all just seem illegal for the ears.

But to view this from a different set of spectacles, the record could just be the most honest record the band has done. They just don’t like saying it out loud. Confusion throughout the whole record has an authentic formalism in its skin that is overlooked. The darkness that surrounds the sporadic synths perfectly deconstruct the feeling of loneliness amidst the company of everyone. Tracks such as “Chloroform” and “Don’t” which provide strong ballads that deliver meaningful lines retel truths about human capacities on love and its complicated longing for all or none of it.

Overall, the album is a bummer. Judgments boiled down to overdone synths and unnecessary distortions make the whole thing just hard to understand. It remains, however, lyrically impressive (C’mon guys, it’s Phoenix) and fittingly crafted for the intentional obscurity of the record.  In the end, the album that desperately tried to connect never really latched on. It just seemed to be standing in the corner, lurking in the shadows and feeling around for guidance. And we can try to wait for it to come out, but we know deep down it won’t; but we still try, and it is sad. Bummer.

Rating: 2.0