Bankrupt! is the first new Phoenix album in four years. It is not a political or financial statement. It does not offer solutions to the world’s great problems or suggest excitement over insolvency. It sounds almost nothing like old Phoenix albums. It was made by the same people who made those albums, but they may not be playing the same instruments. These people are: Thomas Mars, Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz, Christian Mazzalai, Deck d’Arcy. It was written and recorded in New York City, New York, U.S.A., and Paris, France. It was produced by the band and Philippe Zdar in Montmartre. Champagne was involved. It contains 10 songs, no more. These songs are listed below and should not be altered from this order.

Bankrupt! is the end result of a process that began almost immediately after Phoenix walked offstage at the end of their last tour. This tour was in support of their Grammy Award-winning, critically-acclaimed and gold-selling fourth album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. In late 2010, the band entered Oscilloscope Laboratories in Manhattan, New York City, and commenced experiments with sound and color. This period of experimentation lasted for three months. During this time the band began to feel nostalgia for their home country, France. Laurent Brancowitz recalls the origins of this feeling after watching a film set in Paris, with images of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. “I felt a strong emotion, and I knew it wasn’t normal,” he says. “I was in a position I had never been in before where I loved France like a foreigner. So when we came back we had this openness. New York influenced us in that way, that we embraced our Frenchness even more

Bankrupt! is not disposable popular music. Though the songs are quite pleasurable on first listen, subsequent listenings will produce deeper engagement and satisfaction. This is intentional. “This album has more layers,” says Brancowitz. “The more you listen, the more you hear, and the more you really understand what’s going on. At the same time, we wanted it to be really fluid and simple like a sphere made of marble. You just see a sphere, but there’s a guy who polished it for a year.”

This simple/complex dichotomy is evident in the pentatonic structure heard throughout the album on songs such as “Entertainment” and “Drakkar Noir,” alongside the Wagnerian overdrive of “SOS in Bel-Air” and “Oblique City.” Bankrupt! will be a dizzying experience for the listener, also intentional. “We were feeling this vertigo, this feeling of being at the very limit of failure,” says Brancowitz. “It’s something we love to explore. After a while you realize the most interesting things in life are not success or triumph. It’s more the possibility of everything collapsing.”