Four Frenchmen and a controversial RnB singer walk into a club. No it’s not the start of a joke but the punchline is pretty amazing – including news that the band will be touring Australia in early 2014.

Parisian indie favourites Phoenix have premiered their collaboration with R. Kelly, who has remixed the band’s latest single, ‘Trying To Be Cool’ – the latest to be lifted from their latest album Bankrupt! 

The new version of the single features R. Kelly spitting new vocals that intertwine around Phoenix singer’s Thomas Mars, offering lyrical pearls like “stepping out tonight… going hard tonight,” while the tune finishes with the RnB star declaring: “Remix. Phoenix. Keelz.”

The track seems to begin in the land of kitsch and then happily skims the borders of tacky, and if you had to pinpoint the point of migration it would be the lines, “I’mma walk up in da club/ I’mma holler at the honeys.”  (A Phoenix first.)

It’s a strange collaboration for sure, but not the first time that Phoenix and R Kelly have crossed paths with the French rock band blowing the Coachella 2013 crowd away with their live mash-up of ‘1901’ and Kelly’s ‘Ignition’ with a surprise performance from the man himself.

Speaking with Triple J Breakfast hosts Tom & Alex this morning, Thomas Mars recounts the Coachella experience. “He sings about believing he can fly, but he does not fly. He takes his tourbus, which was stuck in traffic when we got on stage,” recounts Mars. ”

So we were nervous that when the music started and he was supposed to come onstage, he wouldn’t show up. There was a brief moment where we thought: ‘What should we do now? It’s not gonna happen.’ And then suddenly the smell of cigar came onstage, and a giant gold diamond microphone showed up. And there he was.”

Mars also confirmed to the station that the band will be returning to Australia for a tour in March 2014. “We talked about it yesterday and we’re [touring] for sure in March,” he says. “The whole month is clear for us so we’ll be enjoying some Australian sun then.”

The band were last in the country for the 2011 Good Vibrations Festival and Phoenix have previously said that touring Australia has been “a priority because we’ve always enjoyed it a lot there,” as guitarist Laurent Brancowitz said back when the band were rumoured for this year’s Splendour In The Grass.

The Phoenix Australian Tour 2014 Dates could be with us as early as next week, as promoters Live Nation recently teased a “BIG tour announcement next week” along with a vintage photo of the Phoenix Military Band, as FasterLouder points out.


Rumours also suggest that the Live Nation announcement could be none other than Sir Paul McCartney – the image being a reference to Sgt. Peppers – as Big Day Out CEO Adam Zammit tweeted – with the legendary Beatle on our borders this November when he wraps up his Japanese Tour in Tokyo. Additionally, Ticketek recently launch a waiting list for a potential Australian tour on their website.

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