The French indie-pop band Phoenix have been making music for 20 years now.
The band released “Ti Amo,” its sixth record, earlier this year. There’s an elastic dance-glam fizz to the new music, with twinkling keyboards, big bass lines and vocals that quiver and coo. Even when sung in English, French bubblegum has its own peculiar thickness and fruity flavor. There’s a line on one of the new songs about standing by the jukebox drinking champagne or prosecco, listening to the Buzzcocks. That sort of sums up the mix of Euro-sophistication, fizz and curled-lip attitude that Phoenix projects now. The new record has a sunny, Italian vibe — think idyllic marble ruins, extended holidays and a sense of style going back millennia.
Much of it was hatched in an old opera house that’s been reconfigured as a studio environment. This is all a slight change from the band’s more guitar-centric 2009 album “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” which won a Grammy for Best Alternative Album, and sounded a little like a more polite version of the Strokes.
Phoenix performs at College Street Music Hall, 238 College St., New Haven, on Sunday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $39.50, collegestreetmusichall.com.
