AIR's Breathtaking Return
NEIRAD enilno edition
Since their debut with the breezy bachelor-pad classic, 1998’s Moon Safari, draguer French electronic gurus Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel aka Air have been drifting slowly away from bubbly downtempo electro-balladry that they made their standard in their late 90s heyday in exchange for foggy atmospheric soundscapes (Virgin Suicides) and scarce robotic pop (10,000Hz Legend). Love 2 is basically a continuation in this departure, rougher around the edges with a more organic instrumentation, heavy on fuzzy spy-guitars (“Be a Bee”, “Eat My Beat”), acoustic noodling (“Sing, Sang, Sung”) and frantic cocktail lounge piano. (“Tropical Disease”).
Love 2 kicks off with the roughest Air single yet, “Do the Joy”, woozy layers of swirling, nauseous synthesizers surrounding an incomprehensible robot monologue, claiming, “The world is on the brink/the brink of extinction/the end of an era/the end of a genre.” Air’s not 100% on the new genre thing as it turns out, “Sing, Sang, Sung” and “Missing the Light of Day” could have been stripped down cuts from Moon Safari with the same breathy singers crooning over chilled instrumentation. However, the album lacks the unique swinger vibe of Moon Safari and it’s too muted and predictable to capture the haunting electric symphonics of Virgin Suicides, the band’s most inspired moments. The album lands somewhere in between 2007’s Pocket Symphony and 2001’s 10,000Hz Legend sometimes catchy and sometimes chilling but rarely awe inspiring.
Breezy ballad “Sing, Sang, Sung”, paranoid robo-jam “Do the Joy”, and sparse, feather light “Love” are obvious standouts, but the James Bond guitars, spiraling keyboards and creepy “all alone” refrain of “So Light is Her Footfall” and (my personal favorite, and dead catchy as well) the hypnotic, syrupy fog of “Tropical Disease”, complete with flutes and rushing Charlie Brown piano is Air at it’s best, using bachelor-pad electro-atmosphere to power a backdrop of otherwise surreally chilling melodies. Unfortunately, Love 2 has plenty of direction-less experiments without any unexpected twists, like the painfully repetitive go-go riffs on “Eat My Beat” and the dreary uneventful “Night Hunter” that keep this album weighed down with some of Air’s most unexciting work. Sophisticated, sure. Excellent in quality, definitely. But some variety to the Air formula and maybe a couple more hummable melodies would be a nice touch.
Following in fellow electronic celebrity (and DHS graduate) Moby’s footsteps, Air has released a passable but otherwise dull album of mellowed out music this year, staying in a zone of hushed semi-experimental drone with short flashes of inspiration (the unexpected Kraftwerk-style keyboard scramble on “Missing the Light of Day”, and drowsy flute over synthesizer break in “Tropical Disease”). I’m still waiting on the end of a genre, but the album has enough smoothness and bite to keep Air fans interested. Still, if you’re new to this band check out the seriously spine-chilling Virgin Suicides (the soundtrack to the Sofia Coppola movie of the same name) and swinger classic Moon Safari, especially the single “Playground Love” which oozes an eerie sort of nostalgia that has to be heard for itself, to hear Air at their peak, butter smooth sub zero electronica with just enough darkness to remain one of today’s most interesting outfits…
