Though Bankrupt! is officially Phoenix’s fifth studio album, many listeners will likely know this album simply as a follow-up to the synth-rock band’s chart-topping success, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. As such, the main question on everyone’s mind is, will the songs on Bankrupt! recreate the effervescent, inimitable pop-magic that was “1901” or “Lisztomania”? The answer is probably not, but the album is still impressive and nothing less than a great deal of fun. With astounding production and an insatiable insanity of synth-sprayed sound, Bankrupt! delivers consistently with upbeat and sparkling pop-treats that you just won’t find elsewhere.
Tracks like “S.O.S in Bel Air” and “Entertainment” deliver immediately with fuzzy, noisy pop-gibberish that aims for radio-friendly refrains. “The Real Thing” and “Trying to Be Cool” strut with a certain eighties tinged-moodiness. The slowly-evolving “Bankrupt!” is the album’s only real departure in style, and is an homage to the band’s downtempo, electronic roots. Latter tracks tend to tread a little too much on each other’s toes, though each has its own memorable moment, like the anthem-esque refrain of “Bourgeois” or the god-like, wholly-enveloping vocals in the chorus of “Don’t.”
In general, there’s something of an attention-deficit disorder to the tracks here. While memorable moments present themselves across the album, individual tracks can’t seem to stick to one melodic motif. Instead they veer and race between various melodic shifts, as if perpetually entranced by some shiny new strain of sound. As such, none of the tracks really achieve the cool consistency that could be found in “1901”, meaning this likely won’t be as memorable an album as its predecessor. But the sound races faster and fizzes more glamorously, putting it quite on a level all of its own.
