PHOENIX : "United"

There's nothing like having your preconceptions blown sky high. Say the words "French band", and most people think of groovy Gallic house, chilled moog music and very little else. Well Phoenix are a French band. They even wrote a small but perfectly formed disco tune called Heatwave for 1999's Source Rocks compilation. But their debut album, United, sounds nothing like it. Or, for that matter, any "French band" you've heard so far.

Don't get them wrong. The Paris-based foursome like club music, but they also like Serge Gainsbourg and AC/DC, country & western and blues. They like Michael Jackson and Ennio Morricone, free jazz saxophone and Gil Scott-Heron. And, more than anything, they like songs.

Songs like Too Young, a funky slice of American road music with synth sounds inspired by Van Halen's Jump. Like the gorgeous Honeymoon, a sunset ballad with a gentle R&B pulse, or On Fire, which uses African rhythms and a clavinet (a funky descendent of the harpsichord) and ends up sounding like Iggy Pop and James Williamson's Kill City (if it had been recorded by Barry White in 1974)."

"We're all children of the 80s," explains Laurent "Branco" Brancowitz. "We wanted to take the hot burning sound of American records and give them the contemporary feel of hip hop and house productions."

The story starts in 1991. Thomas Mars (vocals), Deck D'Arcy (bass) and Christian Mazzalai (guitars) were a garage band practising, appropriately enough, in the garage of Thomas' house in the Paris suburbs. Around that time, Christian's older brother Branco was playing in the short-lived indie outfit Darlin'. When that ended in 1995, big brother came in on guitar. They toured the bar circuit with nothing but Hank Williams and Prince covers in their repertoire, but the audiences were drunk so that was OK.

In 1997 they hit on the Phoenix name and pressed up 500 singles on their own label, Ghettoblaster. With a punk rock A-side (Party Time, re-made for United) and a chugging Krautrocker on the flip, it hinted at the eclecticism to come. Soon, Paris-based Source records were on the phone.