Hours after our interview, I run into Mazzalai, d’Arcy and Branco at central London’s St Pancras station, buying crisps and packaged poké bowls in a rush-hour-busy Marks & Spencer at least two of the three crack some kind of joke about stowing me in their suitcases. All four members balance a bookish sense of humour with the kind of jokes you’d expect from a bunch of middle-aged dads. They are ultra-polite and great company – Mazzalai effusive and cartoonishly wide-eyed d’Arcy quiet and wry the witty, weary Branco, clad in a Phoenix-branded work jacket Mars erudite, sweet and a little acidic. (A common title for Phoenix profiles: “Phoenix rises from the flames,” says Branco.) Sitting with the quartet, it is tempting to just lean back and listen to them digress into in-jokes and riffs – about French radio stations, British accents and their coverage in the press. Although few of them live in the same city any more – d’Arcy and Mazzalai live in Paris, while Branco lives in Rome and Mars lives in New York with his wife, the director Sofia Coppola – they still seem to have a truly tight bond they may not be the same twentysomethings they were on their early tours, cramming four beds together in a single hotel room to create a kind of clubhouse, but they’re clearly just as close. Huddled together in the sterile control room of a studio in London, Mars, d’Arcy, Mazzalai and Brancowitz are the picture of a functioning family unit, communicating in gestures and nods, finishing each other’s sentences and jumping in to add detail to each other’s points.
Phoenix have been making peerless pop for more than 20 years, which gives Mars and his brothers some serious authority on the realities of the creative process. Photograph: Sebastian Nevols/The Guardian
Les quatre fabuleux … Phoenix (clockwise from top left) Christian Mazzalai, Thomas Mars, Deck D'arcy, Laurent Brancowitz.
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