The Phoenix Foundation
Horsepower

YAM Recordings 2007

By Zach Stephenson

Serving as a small thorn in George Lucas’s flab, coughing up that truly awful “How Bizarre” top-40 classic and reportedly serving as a lost colony for decent alternative rock – this is what people think of when New Zealand crosses their minds like a brief wisp of a stranger’s Ricola twice a year.

It’s taken the Kiwi island’s most-feted band The Phoenix Foundation nearly three years to have their debut album Horsepower officially reach Stateside via the Young American label. Their government has even reportedly pitched in for tour costs.

That type of support would suggest a group of softies, and though their music flitters into the chilly-warmth safety zone of breakout Coldplay, it’s more akin musically to The Bends’ dream-state bridged with the dirty-fingernail lyricism of lo-fi Cracker and the Boo Radleys. In other words, you want to listen to them because they do with class that sleepily agreeable rock that is all too often emasculated for America’s coffee shops and have an appealing underdog back-story that indie publicists aren’t CAPing but could be.

This discourse of The Phoenix Foundation’s Horsepower is written by Zach Stephenson for ignore Magazine, copyright 2007 .