Doing a 180: Phoenix, United

Nowadays, all the kids love Phoenix: thanks to the success of their singles “1901” and “Lisztomania,” their 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix went gold in the US, and their fanbase was such that the 2013 follow-up Bankrupt! provided the band with their first top-five album. What sometimes gets lost in the shuffle, however, is that the band’s big commercial breakthrough was actually their fourth album.

If this is news to you and is a revelation that makes you want to dig a little deeper into the origins of Phoenix, well, now’s the perfect time, because we’ve just reissued the band’s 2000 debut, United, on 180-gram vinyl for your listening enjoyment.

Not that we’re not partial, but if you do a little digging around, you’ll find that we’re not the only ones who really dig this album. Indeed, Europeans audiences caught on to the Phoenix sound earlier than we did on these shores: even with a title just begging listeners to hit the dance floor, the band’s first single, “Party Time,” didn’t manage to chart, but “Too Young” caught the ears of a few folks and crawled into the lower reaches of the UK and French charts. When “If I Ever Feel Better” was released as a single, Phoenix found themselves with a top-10 single in Belgium and Italy, with the song charting at #12 in France and #65 in the UK. There are great songs beyond the singles, too, with “On Fire” and “Summer Dance” both worthy of mention, and if we’re going to be really honest, it’s hard to deny the awesomeness of any album that features a track entitled “Funky Squaredance, Pts. 1-3.”

Intrigued? You should be. Pick up United on vinyl, give it a spin, and if you’ve never heard it before, don’t be surprised if you quickly fall in love.