Music Video of the Week: 1901 by Phoenix

Video attempts to blind you, yet still you'll thank them  

Under most circumstances, synthetic sounds and flashing lights are a recipe for overdone disco-style videos. But this is not the case with this excellent video by Phoenix. Featuring one of the best songs from the band's recent album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, this video hooks you with clean guitar and catchy synth melodies. The light show is clever and plays off of the music in a very creative way. But the highlight of this band, in my opinion, are the unique vocals of lead singer Thomas Mars, which apparently are achieved through the use of a vocal pedal. In the linked interview, Mars says this about the vocal effect:

“It sounds like two voices on top of each other, which is something that is a bit of a trademark on this record,” Mars said. “It has this candy effect, a very sweet, treated voice underneath the natural voice, so I can see how people get confused by all of it but we really played it live!”

Sounds good to me.

Give it a quick look and you'll probably find yourself coming back for more. If nothing else, it's something different and it accompanies a very catchy song.


See Also:
-- A pretty impressive performance this past summer on The David Letterman Show. I always appreciate a band that performs well live.