I feel that, in the same way that time-of-year can alter the effect, affect and impact an album has, so too can the time of day it’s listened to. You need to be lulled into an awakened state, leveled off, and then slowly dropped back down again.
Yes, I just compared a day’s iTunes playlist to taking ecstasy. What of it? It makes sense.
For example: You wouldn’t wake to wake up at 7 in the morning to “Deceptacon”…though I have before, and believe me-it defines “rude awakening”. Nothing like Kathleen Hanna up in your bed and up in your head before you’ve even had a chance to brew the coffee.
It seems that , since January, every morning as I enter into my office to do, well, office-esque things (i.e. check blogs, email, and Mcsweeneys, whilst bitching and bemoaning whatever craptastic Shins record got a 9.125795 carry the remainder over at Tha Fork….only to rapidly fire off a press request for the verysame album if we at Res Mag haven’t yet been pressed it), I’ve found the only fitting soundtrack to my mornings in one album-the new Air, Pocket Symphony. And, given that it’s now almost March, that means I’m nearly two months overdue in saying anything about it.
Pocket Symphony is a lovely little whisp of an album that replaces the more jazz-influenced touches of Moon Safari and Talkie Walkie with a French lushpop sheen akin to early St Etienne minus Sarah Cracknell’s ego-it’s a slow, moment-by-moment and minute-to-minute affair, one that’s relatively down-tempo in mood but fluid in movement.
“Photograph” has that classic Air sound, a touch of smoke and electonic noir, while at the same time holding a grip on a timidly creepy set of fandom lyrics.
Air ft Jarvis Cocker: One Hell Of A Party
“One Hell Of A Party” is my favorite song on the album, and definitely my favorite moment out of anything Air’s done in recent memory. There’s something about the subtle caress and kiss that Jarvis gives to the slow piano let-down that serves as a bookmark to the obnoxious salon frivolity that so much of Air’s catalogue is made up of.
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love “Sexy Boy” as much as the next monkey in a t-shirt, but it’s nice to know that the boys in Air realize there’s another side to the martinis-with-a-girl-named-Martina coin, and that it’s the morning after.
However good Pocket Symphony is, and however much of an improvement it may be over the French fields and valleys and haircuts of Talkie Walkie and Moon Safari, it will never touch my favorite Air album, 10000 Hz Legend. It was on the Legend tour that I first saw them live, and it was on that album that JB and Nicolas allowed themselves to experiment with BPMs higher than 70 and with keyboard settings other than “drunk/happy”. The album’s first track, “Electronic Performers”, set them up as lost, stranded robo-producers, a theme that followed through the album’s quirky, metallic-blue-steel-and-sunshine sound. Critically, however, and with fans who wanted more Air-ported jazz to set their Nat Shermans alight, Legend flopped in a massive way. It did manage to spawn a remix e.p., which turned a handful of the tracks over to, amongst others, NERD.
Air: People In The City (Jack Lahana remix)
This remix of Legend’s “People In The City” turns the clean-cut Frenchmen of Air into the sleazeball slicked-back greasers they metamorphed into on the Legend tour (typical audience banter: JB, to the crowd: “I am feeling crispy. And crunchy. And creepy”), and turns the stagnant beat into something bordering on the faux-ghetto attempt at funk that’s been popularized by Mylo, Lyndstrom and others. As a whole, though,t his works it out, and works it out hard and raw, with a smile on its’ pretty face.
All-in-all, I’m still learning to appreciate the slower moments of Pocket Symphony , but it’s less because they’re not well done and more because they’re just, so, well, typical Air. Their catalogue is full of music to get your nails did to, and it only serves to make their truly amazing or groundbreaking moments, like “One Hell Of A Party”, stand out as the nouveau classiques they are.
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