Okay, this song has been available on the French band Phoenix’s web site for a couple weeks now, but it’s taken a few listens for it to become my favorite tune of the moment. “1901” kicks off with a bit of Bloc Party-style dramatics, big synth-y bass notes and echo-y radar blips acting all spooky and stuff. But it gets more complicated, the dark underpinnings supporting a song that quickly becomes joyful, ecstatic even. The lyrics don’t give anything away—the chorus’ repeated line, “Falling, falling,” seems to contain both senses of the word, “head-over-heels” and “from a great height.” This mixed up combination of emotions doesn’t really have a name in English, I don’t think, but it’s all too common: a tossed salad of ecstasy and agony, nostalgia and contentment that a lot of great pop-dance-rock music seems to inhabit, like LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends,” Silversun Pickups’ “Lazy Eye,” Arcade Fire’s “Rebellion (Lies).” Phoenix’s “1901” may be too much plain old fun to enter that pantheon of greatness, but right now its three glorious minutes feel like the first sign of spring.
Listen and download a high-quality (hooray!) 256 kbps mp3 of “1901” as well as the multitrack files at the band’s web site, or listen to a YouTube stream below. The band’s new album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, will be out May 25.
Phoenix – “1901”
