Phoenix: Bankrupt! – review

Bankrupt? Not unless they've spent it all on monogrammed Porsches. If anything, the success of Phoenix's last album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – which finally brought them big success, after nine years of trying – means the French four-piece are flying high. To follow up their first million-seller, they've made a record that sounds "like the TGV [high-speed train], nostalgic, futuristic", which is a way of saying it doesn't really depart from the cashmere-lined soft rock that made their name. Nostalgic is right – the album opens with a chiming synth line recalling the Vapors' 1980 hit Turning Japanese, and much of Bankrupt! is in thrall to the past. Along with period touches such as SOS in Bel Air's airy, multilayered vocals and the Love Unlimited-inspired strings on Trying to be Cool, they also replicate the sterling musicianship of the era, and the idea that there is no emotional state so wrenching that it can't be cured with lashings of breezy keyboards. As ever, great fun.