Phoenix would later make a splash with big soft Ratatatesque guitar-as-synth hooks, full of precision-crafted tones and mostly-unadventurous songwriting. Everything in its right place.
It's a bit surprising then that their debut is such a weird, sprawling hodgepodge, complete with disco revival, string-laden Air instrumentals, crunchy alt-rock riffs, spooky 80's synths, and a 9-minute autotune honkytonk/hip-hop clusterbomb as a cherry on top. Everything is still plenty overproduced, with that weird French sheen, but its a reversal of their previous work: the songs individually aren't all that memorable, but the album as a whole is so wildly adventurous that it gets your attention. United plays like a mixtape: the flow is solid, the overall tone is consistent within a certain space, but you're hearing something a little different around ever corner. If you're having a quiet, slightly funky, slightly intimate night, it might just do you right 3.5/5
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