Phantom Planet

Raise The Dead

[4/5]

Phantom Planet are back with as big a departure from 2004’s self-titled effort as that album was from the power-pop moves of 2002’s The Guest. On Raise The Dead, it’s out with the tightly wound post-punk adrenalin, in with the atmosphere, strings and dynamics. It’s not that they haven’t indulged in their fair share of rocking: “Dropped” has a beat as insistent as the Jam’s early Molotov cocktail of Motown and speed, while “You Can Be My Ship” is a spirited swagger through the T. Rex school of glam–with horns. But the moodier moments are what ultimately make this album Phantom Planet’s best. The title track eases you in with acoustic guitars and percussion, quietly creeping along until the strings come crashing in to greet the chorus hook as Alex Greenwald howls like a man who might just raise the dead. It’s brilliant. So is “Quarantine,” a melancholy ballad that stews in its drama like vintage Radiohead. But their finest hour is “Leader”–its lyrics inspired by Greenwald’s obsession with cults, a children’s choir goes all existential with, “We’re on a ticking bomb” before producer Tony Berg (Pete Yorn, X) strips it down to just drums and a spiraling shard of reverb-soaked guitar. (FUELED BY RAMEN) Ed Masley



Rocks Like:

Blur’s 13

Radiohead’s The Bends

The Strokes’ Is This It

IN-STORE SESSION WITH FRONTMAN ALEX GREENWALD

The children’s choir on “Leader” is a nice touch.

Yeah, those kids were such a trip. They’re all about 7 to 10 years old, and they had such charisma and attitude.

Did it take awhile for them to nail it?

They were really quick about it. I think that’s what makes a troublemaker–a smart person who gets stuff quickly. I wrote the lyrics on the board and the second they came in, they started reading them. They were like, “Why are we on a ticking bomb?” I had to explain, “Well, this song is about the possibility of the end of the world.” Try and explain that while somebody’s trying to do the Superman.

To what extent is the change-up from album to album something you’re striving to do?

As a writer, I can’t do the same thing twice. Not because I’m magical or anything. It’s just, why do I want to repeat? I’m a collection of my daily experiences, influences, emotions and stimuli, and that’s what I put into anything when I pick up an instrument. So I’ve experienced more and different things in the three-and-a-half or four years since the last one came out. I tend to get obsessed with a concept that I use to hold the songs together. This time, it was studying the music and the history of certain cults, like Jim Jones, Charles Manson or David Koresh. All that music, in listening to it, is some of the most joyful, spirited, hopeful music, but when you know the circumstances around how the music was made or the history of what happened to the cult a year or two later, the lyrics in the songs take on a completely different meaning.

I know you tried a bunch of different arrangements on each song the last time. Did you try that this time?

A lot of the versions you hear are probably one or two takes of the band. We rented an old church in Malibu, California, that had just been converted to a performance hall. When you record like that, there’s not much separation, so there’s nothing you can do other than to have a well-rehearsed song you’re not gonna mess up so that editing doesn’t become some sort of magical, nearly impossible thing with leakage. Tony [Berg], the producer, is a big proponent of the ideal “now the damn song” when you record because you never know how long you’ll be spending trying to fix an arrangement mistake. Come in prepared, be a surgeon, stitch it up and get the fuck out.

There was originally talk of this album coming out this time last year. What happened?

Two things: I wrote more songs that I felt made some of the other ones that didn’t make the record pale in comparison. The other was I went on about a seven-month tour with Mark Ronson, the DJ/producer, in England, which was a blast–but did not help the finishing of my record. –Ed Masley