french band phoenix may very well be having the best year ever. theyve had a large and dedicated fan base for a few years now, but with the release of their album “wolfgang amadeus phoenix” earlier this year, their popularity has soared and they are all over the place now. my latest favorite thing theyve done is their blogotheque take away show in front of the eiffel tower. so i was glad that they finally returned to detroit for a show at clutch cargos, also known as the old church turned 18+ club that myself and many of my friends fake IDed our way into before we were 18. what was more exciting was that just about everyone i knew would be in attendance, and i was pretty sure that the crowd would skew more towards 21+ than barely legal to drive a car. i dont really have a problem with the youngins, just their total lack of not being obnoxious (thats a double negative folks). but i guess we were all that age and acted that way once, so i can let bygones be bygones.

i had a work event to attend so arrived just in time to make my way through the crowd to snap some shots. thankfully clutch cargo has a railing/pit area in front of the stage so i didnt have to fight with the crowd too much. the band took the stage a little after nine and it was full steam ahead. they opened with “lisztomania” and as expected the crowd was fully into it right off the bat. a few songs into the set, i THINK during “lasso”, the song i hated when i first heard it which quickly became a favorite from the new album, lead singer thomas mars jumped down into the pit and had his way with the crowd (while a few members of the crowd had their way with him too) all but crowdsurfing much to the delight of the audience, especially those in the first few rows.

the band made their way through the setlist which included a lot of material from the new album plus a nice spattering of older tunes. as i found my various groups of friends in attendance, the consensus was clear that everyone was pretty impressed with the energy and great sound coming from the band (even if the guitars were a bit lower than we would have liked). while the lighting wreaked havoc on my attempts to take any sort of acceptable photograph, it added a ton to the overall impact of the show, essentially silhouetting the band most of the time and treating the crowd to excessive strobe lighting to compliment the backdrop which was essentially a full size recreation of the album art from their latest release.

the band left the stage to a roar of screams and applause and returned for the encore which really ran the gamut of time and style. they started out with a much slowed down version of “everything is everything” off their 2004 album “alphabetical” which was really just thomas singing along with a guitar which was only sometimes playing. they carried on with that style paying homage to another fantastic french group, air, with a slow and minimalist cover of “playground love”. next up was a much more upbeat number in “if i ever feel better” from their debut album “united” which brought back in the rest of the band, and last but certainly not least was the conclusion of the show with what seemed like a ten minute version of “1901″. the band trudged through while the entire crowd sang along and when the song was over, the crowd was teased that the night was complete, but then they kicked back in for a reprise and blew the roof off with a final chorus.

i think for me, the biggest surprise was the stage presence of mars. id seen a few performances on tv before and remember being very underwhelmed with him live (to be fair im sure its much more difficult when you arent necessarily face to face with an actual crowd), but tonight was a totally different story. mars was extremely animated and was all over the place, often standing on his monitors at the front of the stage, and as i mentioned even jumped off stage and into the welcoming arms of the first few rows of the crowd.

a selection of my pics from the night are below and,of course, you can see these and the rest of the pics on the dailybeatz flickr page.

and then it snowed. we went to the scantly attended afterparty in the lounge downstairs and danced with a few other folks to some good tunes (which coincidentally included yesterdays justice remix, played just after midnight on the day the song would be posted on this very site) before the long and slow drive home.

on to the music. and what other than my current album favorite from “wolfgang amadeus phoenix”, the aforementioned “lasso”.

phoenix – lasso

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and since phoenix is good people, they opened up their album to be remixed/covered by anyone who wanted to a few months back and released the best of the best. here’s a favorite of mine from that endeavor, a great garage rock cover of the originally sorta funky “fences” by the soft pack out of san diego, which i happen to like even more than the original. good work.

phoenix – fences (the soft pack remix)

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