On a recent night in late April, the Grammy Award-winning rock band Phoenix exploded onto the stage amid billows of smoke, blasts of white light and a tidal wave of sound at Tokyo¡¯s Shibuya Stream Hall.
It was the tail end of a weeklong residency in the capital, but the musicians showed no signs of fatigue. Guitarist Christian Mazzalai bounced to the infectious, jittery rhythms of the hit single ¡°Lisztomania,¡± while lead singer Thomas Mars ¡ª a lithe Frenchman with floppy brown hair ¡ª leaned into the song¡¯s cryptically brilliant lyrics. He stopped abruptly as he launched into the chorus, but the crowd didn¡¯t skip a beat.
¡°Think less and see it grow,¡± they roared back, finishing the line, ¡°Like a riot, like a riot ¡ª oh!¡±
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