French synth-pop quartet Phoenix has risen fast over the past year. Thursday night's sold-out, victory-lap concert at the State Theatre more than tripled the size of its Varsity Theater gig last summer.
Unfortunately for the band and its fans, moving up in size among Twin Cities concert venues often means moving into a place with permanent seats. The State's plush chairs felt like rigid shackles during the 80-minute concert, especially compared with the Varsity show and the similarly dance-floor-centric First Avenue gig in September. Few rock bands of the moment are as infectiously danceable, but you wouldn't have known that looking at Thursday's contained crowd.
The stifled atmosphere certainly could not be blamed on the Versailles-bred golden boys. Phoenix was even bank-vault-tight at the poorly ventilated Varsity concert, which was so sweat-drenched the Frenchmen would've been forgiven for phoning it in.
Thursday's concert had the same precise musicianship and perfectly paced energy. In fact, it was nearly the same set as a year ago, save for a few different songs and a bigger light show -- the latter of which was not to be discounted, as those lights were perfectly in sync with the band's strobe-like rhythms.
Like before, the group opened with one of its two big 2009 hits, "Lisztomania." Singer Thomas Mars soon echoed his fan-boy shout-out to Prince, who once again wasn't in attendance. Josh Hartnett showed up, though. The actor starred in "Virgin Suicides," the first movie by Mars' filmmaker girlfriend, Sofia Coppola, the soundtrack of which was represented in the encore with "Playground Love" (originally an Air song featuring Mars on vocals).
Considering Phoenix's largely overlooked catalog -- last year's breakout album "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" was its fourth -- the band should have dug up more old nuggets to lengthen its show. Those 80 minutes still packed in an impressive amount of musical diversity and dexterity, though. Frontman Mars' charmingly soft voice didn't change much, but the music did, with Blondie-ish disco-punk ("Fences") to a surprisingly mesmerizing New Age-style instrumental ("Love Like a Sunset, Part I"), vaguely Afro-centric dance anthems ("Rally") and U2-ish urgency ("Countdown").
Songs like "Countdown" and the poppy "Girlfriend" prompted fans to rush the aisles to dance near the stage, but ushers dutifully turned them away. The dance party didn't really stick until the group played its other big hit, "1901," to end the encore, during which time Mars climbed off the stage into the crowd. No worries of him being sweated on by fans this time around.
See Phoenix's set list at startribune.com/artcetera Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658
