Phoenix’s Deck d’Arcy on ‘Ti Amo’ and coming back to Manila

MANILA, Philippines – It’s been a few years since Phoenix was in Manila, having played a sold out show at the Wanderland festival last January 2014. The band is returning for a show on August 15, at the Araneta Coliseum, bringing along songs from their latest album, Ti Amo. 

The album has been described as the band’s softest, sweetest album yet, with Rolling Stone calling it “mellow seventies sunshine” and Pitchfork saysingit is “glossy, soft-pop romance,” and with tracks like “Tuttifrutti,””Fior di Latte,” “Lovelife,” and the title track, “Ti Amo,” a more colorful point-of-view is to be expected from the new record. 

Ahead of the show, Rappler caught up with bassist Deck d’Arcy, who talked about the new album’s noticeably more romantic sound, why the band came back to Manila, and what audiences can expect from their upcoming show.

Why did you decide to play in Manila again?

We don’t decide where we go, we just go where people want us to come. Apparently, people wanted to see Phoenix, so we came back. We really like the first time we came, it was a pretty epic show, so we decided to come back.

Any song you’re excited to be playing for this show?

We never really know what the set list is going to be before we play. It’s decided a few minutes before the show, so we’ll see. Probably depending on what we played last time also, we’ll try something different.

Why is the new album called Ti Amo?

We always wanted to call an album [that] – Bankrupt! was meant to be called Je t’aime, which means the same thing in French. The music was not fitting the title. It was too cynical to be called this way. This album [Ti Amo] is much more positive and celebrating something, more light so it was a much better fit.

Was the lightness in Ti Amo something you planned when you were making the music?

We never plan what we’re gonna do – we tried to when we were younger but it never worked. Now we accepted the fact that we can’t control the direction of what things are gonna take, so we just go with the flow. The way we work is, we set up a new studio, a new sound palette in the studio with new instruments, and we just start improvising for a few months, and after that period, we just sort things, find the direction of the album, and from that point try to build proper sound. It’s nothing really planned, you know?

This album is inspired by Italy – and you also have a previous song on Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix called “Rome.” What’s so special about Italy?

We have two Italian brothers in the band [guitarist and keyboardist Laurent Brancowitz and guitarist Christian Mazzalai] – they’re half-Italian. It’s been there. We’ve been fascinated by Italian music for a few years. It’s the brothers that introduced us to that. This album is not an Italian music album, but Italy is kind of a pretext to write music around.

We feel blessed that we have the fact that we have these Italian roots, or Latin roots in general. It’s kind of a musical landscape that’s still a bit free, it’s an inspiration that hasn’t been sold as much so we’re like okay, let’s jump onto this. One day Thomas [Mars, vocalist] came up with this – we were just improvising in the studio and he started singing “Fior di Latte,” a track in the album.

You’re taking this tour all over the world – how did you prepare for that experience?

We don’t really prepare, we prepare the show not specifically for any place. We thought about this show for quite a while now, maybe a year? We came up with the idea of a stage design. We found a reference in a picture of a French cabaret called Folies Bergère. It’s a picture from the 1920s, and it’s a stage design with a mirror on top of it. I don’t know if we can bring it to Manila, it’s really big and heavy so I don’t know if we’ll have the physical time to bring it, it’s not decided yet, but there will be something else at the tour anyway. We put a lot of energy in this.

What do you think makes your music universal?

If I knew the truth, I would make music all the time. I don’t know. It’s not an easy question. It depends on the song as well. Some songs work, some songs don’t. It’s the charm of it as well. I’m not sure I really want to know why…I guess the fact that we make music in English but in a very French way…I don’t know. The thing is, what’s for sure is that we do things for ourselves from almost A to Z, for the best and for the worst…It’s really homemade. Even videos, the stage design. Everything is kind of homemade.

Any routines or pre-show rituals you get into before you play?

That question is fascinating everyone…it’s a bit of a boring answer, but we don’t have anything.

What can Manila fans expect?

They can expect I hope the same show but even better than last time. I don’t know if it’s going to be possible because we have a very good memory of the show we did. You know when it was really good, it’s always a bit of a problem because you don’t know if you’re gonna be as good as the last time. We have really high expectations. Tell them to be prepared, get ready, because we have high expectations.

What made the last show really good?

The crowd was great. The show depends on only one thing: the crowd. 

– Rappler.com