Flak Magazine: Review of Phantom Planet's The Guest, 04-03-02

Jason Schwartzman isn't really a movie star, though he has starred in movies, in particular a terrific movie called Rushmore and a not so terrific one called Slackers. Alexander Greenwald is even less of a big movie star, having appeared in the black comedy Donnie Darko and not much else.

But because Schwartzman and Greenwald are the drummer and vocalist/guitarist from Phantom Planet, one is tempted to think of their band as the actors' vanity project. A quick listen to The Guest, the band's second album, proves otherwise. The gorgeous single "California" alone shows these guys are for real.

Upon seeing PP live, a fellow Flak staffer described them as "an amalgamation of early Radiohead and the Archies." This is fairly accurate — though the group's brand of bubblegum is a bit closer to the post-Jackson 5 '70s pop of the Partridge Family than the pre-Jackson 5 '60s pop of the Archies.

A couple of songs on The Guest do recall Radiohead: "One Ray of Sunlight" would have fit well on The Bends and "Turn Smile Shift Repeat" is pure OK Computer. Other tracks draw inspiration from the four Bs of mid-'60s pop: The Beatles, The Byrds, and The Beach Boys. With a chaotic final crescendo, "Wishing Well" even takes a stab at "A Day in the Life."

That said, Phantom Planet is still a very young band in every sense; despite the squeaky clean production and the clever songcraft of Greenwald and Schwartzman, their youth shows. A song like "Anthem" would sound like pretentious nonsense from an older band (say U2), but from these kids it's just cute.

And that's the problem with The Guest: It doesn't display a great deal of depth. It does however show a band with great potential to trancend the status of one-hit-wonder and develop into a solid act. More importantly, it shows a great pop band with 10 times the charm of any of the weak Radiohead wannabes that have been flooding the airwaves ever since OK Computer, and 10 times the smarts of the average Pop stars on "TRL."

— Nicholas Coleman (ncoleman@wesleyan.edu)