Album Review: Phoenix--Pop Music Your Parents Won't Hate

Phoenix first came on the scene with their inclusion on Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation soundtrack, but with their new album "It's Never Been Like That" they establish themselves as legitimate Pop ambassadors. I say "pop" not in the Britney Spears sense or the Beyonce sense, but in the sense that Nick Hornby might use it: good, peppy music with a beat that you can tap along to as you ride the subway in the morning. The first single, "Napoleon Says", comes at you like your pappy behind the proverbial woodshed and the pace keeps up with the best starting three tracks you'll hear on an album this year. They slow it down for track 4, at least for a little while, to let us breathe. And then it speeds up. Which is pretty much like the whole album--the songs are never content to remain slow or steady, but constantly progress and expand. This is a huge relief in an age where pop groups have become content to play the same three chords over and over until the requisite three minutes are up. With Phoenix you always know that the song is going somewhere. Track 6, "Lost and Found", doesn't start promisingly, but it gets going and lets up only enough for us to breathe, just like track 4. Track 8 is purely instrumental and purely welcome after an intense first half of an album, but tracks 9 and 10 continue with the goodwill established on the first three tracks with two of the catchiest songs on an already catchy CD in "Sometimes in the Fall" and "Second to None".