The album was then mixed with the assistance of long-term associate Lee Prebble at The Surgery (earthquake warnings taped to the front door). The band recorded Fandango partially at Neil Finn’s Roundhead studios, partially at a barn in the depths of the New Zealand countryside (in the middle of winter, fire blazing in the recording studio, cardigans on) but mostly at the band’s own HQ, The Car Club in Wellington. ‘Thames Soup’ finds the band stretching the pop tropes of mid 70s FM radio to near breaking point while ‘Evolution Did’ channels Sly and Robbie production into an oblique rant on creationism. Check the balladeering yacht rock of ‘Sideways Glance’, the end-of-the-party psych-folk of ‘Modern Rock’, and ‘The Captain’ a 3-minute slice of melancholic melodic joy featuring the vocal talents of co-frontman Lukasz Buda. The album draws on the band’s collective love of the rock canon (Dr John, Black Sabbath, The Carpenters, Can, Talk TalK, ELO, Television,), but also from some of music’s more obscure corners (Harmonia, The Clean, Aphrodite's Child, Erkin Koray, Baris Manco, Georges Zamfir, Hayao Miyazaki). From opener ‘Black Mould’ (perhaps the first motorik-influenced song about respiratory problems induced by inadequate building standards in New Zealand) to the 18 minute closing behemoth ‘Friendly Society’ (almost certainly the only psychedelic epic named after the Quaker movement and which features Neil Finn and Bella Union signed Lawrence Arabia on backing vocals), Fandango is un-coy about its lofty ambitions in an age of digital disposability.
with Jools Holland’.įandango, an expansive, ambitious and gloriously rich 78 minutes, was recorded at four studios over 15-months.
Having made their reputation in New Zealand, Buffalo, their fourth album and the first to be released in Europe, was a critical and commercial hit, and 2011 saw sold out shows across the UK, with a storming set at Glastonbury leading to their UK TV debut on ‘Later. Fandango is the follow up to The Phoenix Foundation’s 2011 album Buffalo.
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