the phoenix lads going through their team drills before Rose Pruning Day

The Phoenix Found­a­tion’s second album Pegas­us is out now, and has fol­lowed the lead of recent releases of fel­low Wel­ling­ton bands Fat Freddy’s Drop (Based on a True Story) and Shi­had (Love is the New Hate) by going straight into the top 10 of the NZ album charts.

Ten years ago it would have been unthink­able that three of the ten top-selling albums in the coun­try would be from New Zea­l­and bands, let alone bands from our fair city (in fact, if you include all the NZ bands, with The Feel­ers and Breaks Co-Op, half the top 10 is homegrown). How many small cit­ies around the world, can boast sim­il­ar pro­por­tions of suc­cess in their nation­al charts? Not many, etc…

And it’s not just some jin­go­ist­ic NZ music month mar­ket­ing coup. The Phoenix Found­a­tion’s alt-coun­try, pop, instru­ment­al, and occa­sion­ally prog-rock­ish album is all class, and has been on high-rotate at Wel­ling­ton­ist Towers over the last week. From the bass-driv­en and theremin laced instru­ment­al spooki­ness of the first single ‘Hitch­cock’ (accom­pan­ied by an incred­ible video from Rueben Suth­er­land, soon to be show­cased at the onedotzero9 fest­iv­al at Lon­don’s ICA along­side the most innov­at­ive music videos of the past year), to the wig­gly gui­tar clas­sic that is new single ‘Damn the River’, the whole album is a gem.

The band are tour­ing in June and July (play­ing in Wel­ling­ton at Indigo on the 24th June), and their live per­form­ances are, if pos­sible, even more bril­liant than their recor­ded efforts, so it goes without say­ing that we recom­mend you head along.

Some use­ful links…