The 8 Ball 01.16.12: The 8 Air Releases From Worst To Best
Posted by Wyatt E. on 02.06.2012
From Moon Safari and Premiers Symptomes to Love 2 and Talkie Walkie and more, 411's Wyatt E. takes a look at the 8 major Air releases from worst to best!
Whattado, everybody!
Attended a party last night where we proved that blowing snow in Newfoundland in February doesn't mean shit when you've got good fireworks. Also, Apples To Apples improves any party. Trust me.
I know, I was actually social. I can't believe it either.
The 8 Ball
This Week's Topic:The 8 Air Releases From Worst To Best.
The Strokes could make a great album right now, but if it's just the same thing, what's the point? I know when we did Moon Safari, it was like, 'OK, if people like that, they will listen to it forever. We don't need to make another one.'" - Nicolas Godin
Air's new album is coming out. Are you excited? I know I am. Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel have spent the last fifteen years (god damn, has it been that long?) concocting fresh, well-produced mixtures of cocktail lounge, French pop, techno, jazz and a whole bunch of other stuff that sounds good through an old synthesizer. If it'll chill you out or exhilarate you in some way, Air will play it and they will play it like the music just descended from the heavens. I'd better shut up now so my fanboying doesn't collapse your monitor.
Over a lengthy career, Air have made one certified classic, a difficult experimental album, and generally a bunch of cool, trippy tracks that haven't always challenged listeners, but rarely failed to provide a rich, easy listening experience. So in honor of the new album, I wanted to do something in the column for them, just to refresh old fans or enlighten newcomers, and noticed that counting the EP and the remix album, Air have had 8 releases.
Jumped at that shit in half a minute. Let's get right down to business.
8. Everybody Hertz.
Oh ha ha ha. See, it's a pun on the song "Everybody Hurts" by REM, but they changed it to reflect the fact that..... okay, I'll stop. This is a remix album, and the duo haven't really done one since. Of course, it came on the heels of 10,000hz Legend, so you can imagine that it doesn't have a great deal of material to work with. But the bigger problem comes with the very nature of the album. Without Air's flair for production to guide the proceedings, this just falls flat on its face.
One thing padding out the record are a pair of radio edits - of "Don't Be Light" and "How Does It Make You Feel" respectively - which is pretty much only of interest to serious collectors (okay, so I'm a serious collector). The "Don't Be Light" edit gets things off to a pretty good start, as it's certainly not an unworthy song, but then we get the same song as filtered by Mr. Oizo (remember him?). I won't mince words: it's not very good. Much of the remixes fall flat, never seeming to kick into second gear and mostly content to nail a beat into your head for ages. There's one true shining moment on this record, and that's the "Modjo version" of "People In The City," which is kind of a silly song to begin with, but it gets turned into a cool jazz jam that's straight out of a lounge somewhere in France (the kind populated by fashion models and a whole bunch of people with Botox).
7. 10,000hz Legend.
This finds itself near the bottom for an interesting reason. After completing work on the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, Air were in the position of being ambitious producers who had just made their name with a solid, effective sound. Of course they aren't satisfied with that; Air wanted more. They wanted to branch out and cover more genres, like rock, classical and a form of pop so melancholy it would put off Nick Drake. The fault of this album doesn't lie with a lack of ambition. Far from it. The fault in this album lies in an overly sophisticated, and let's face it, boring sense of songcraft.
The boys stumbled on 10,000hz Legend, suffering not only from a set of songs slightly deficient in melody but a general emphasis of texture over songs, which deflated fans of their earlier work. It's only seldom a song really makes itself known and stands out from the constant murk - one song, "How Does It Make You Feel," winds up memorable mostly for its vocal which sounds like one of the preset Mac voices - but since I am a fan, I feel the need to point out some highlights: "Electronic Performers," forging ahead on a weird, stuttering beat and featuring the boast of "WE ARE ELECTRONIC PERFORMERS. WE ARE ELECTRONICS." Beck's guest vocal on "The Vagabond" isn't wasted, and is backed by a cool, lounge-y track lead by strummed acoustic guitar and a harmonica(!). But the high point of the record for me is "Radian," the synths of which seem to emerge from the Earth's surface and gradually build into a flowery, lively arrangement.
6. Love 2.
We're getting there, folks, we're getting there. While it would be notable in itself to mention that this is the first album they produced at their own studio, Atlas Studios (I picture a big statue of Rocky from the Rocky Horror Picture Show just hanging out outside), and it was recorded with their then-current live lineup. This lineup was, simply, Godin, Dunckel, and their live drummer, Joey Waronker. Having a solid live drummer handy should ensure a steady pace to Love 2. It does!
This winds up being typical Air, which is not bad indeed. "Love" employs what seems like a drum machine from the late 70s while they just sing the title over and over. Instead of being a one-note joke, it becomes a demonstration for the production, which is quite lovely indeed. "Be A Bee" meanwhile is awesomesauce, a fast-paced rock number that seems lifted from some spy movie..... and god damn it, it's so dance-y. The album's centerpiece is unquestionably "Tropical Disease." Spanning over six minutes, it features that steady pace I was talking about surrounded with piano flourishes and syrupy strings, that proceeds to go through a tempo change, a guitar solo and a single vocal: "Woman..........." The problem with this album is that it tends to be a little Air-by-numbers, and not as distinctive as past successes. But there's enough worthy additions to the band's canon, like the sighing "Sing Sang Sung," to make it worth a listen.
5. The Virgin Suicides.
Has anyone out there ever done a shoegaze version of "Playground Love"? I feel like a big dose of alternative rock distortion would make for a cool reinterpretation. Anyway, this one has slowly increased in prominence over the years. Air doing a soundtrack for a movie seems like such a natural idea; Air doing a soundtrack for a movie about suicide... is a little bit of a tougher sell. The boys did not disappoint. The album retains some trademarks from Moon Safari, and goes a bit further into strict ambient pop than before. No surprise since this is a score, but a good 75% of this album stands rather well on its own.
"Playground Love" sets the tone, and remains one of the best love songs the band ever penned (with vocals from Thomas Mars from Phoenix) thanks to a strange way of turning what should be trite into something moving. (Oh, looks like someone did do a shoegaze cover. Thanks, mysterious band!) Interestingly, the melody from this song repeats itself later throughout the record, notably on "High School Lovers," which gives a neat, conceptual feel. One of my favorite selections is "Dead Bodies," a rapidly paced, piano-driven rocker that was quite a shock at the time. Fans of the band's early stuff will love this too, even if this is much more melancholy in theme. That said, it's actually gotten quite a following on its own terms.
4. Pocket Symphony.
Now we're getting into the good stuff. On the surface, this may just seem like another Air album, and this is definitely the point where fans were onto the band and knew what to expect from them. The draw here is that Air went full tilt with the atmosphere on Pocket Symphony. It paid off big time. Right from the opening, "Space Maker" (it's a pun on "pacemaker"), the classic mellow feeling is in full effect, and it's solidified with the lead single, and one of my personal favorites, "Once Upon A Time."
With the exception of the draining 10,000hz Legend, this may be the band's least upbeat album. "One Hell Of A Party" (featuring Jarvis Cocker from Pulp) just feels so damn sad, like the party in question wound up a total disaster. Notably, this is one of a few songs that shows off Japanese instruments, and it fits so naturally, it's like it was always part of their universe. Then there's "Left Bank," a somber acoustic ballad that provides the best-ever showcase for the duo's vocals, which haven't always met with much critical favor. Really, it's pretty much all somber, which may not make it the best of the band's albums, but it gives it its own certain character.
3. Premiers Symptomes.
What a debut. Premiers Symptomes is a collection of early singles from the band and other little treats, and it shows off the ingredients for the concoction that would soon bring them international fame. Right off the bat, we get "Modular Mix," bearing a slow tempo meant to show off their flair for atmosphere, and its concentrated dose of synthesizer and strings does that nicely. It's the sort of album (well, EP) that basically picks you up and flies you right into space.
Some of Air's best songs ever are here. Songs like "Casanova 70" and "Les Professionnels" mixes bouncy, irresistible basslines with keyboards that sound straight out of the 1960s. "Le Soleil Est Pres De Moi" is the first song of theirs to use vocals (in this case, through a vocoder) and make the most of it with an organ-driven song with a downright mournful tune. The brightest moment comes with "Californie" (which wasn't even available in original pressings!), which begins its running time as a electronically punctuated pop song, as bouncy as they wanna be, until 45 seconds in, it suddenly changes direction, and slowly decreases the intensity until the song is stripped down to a sole piano. Awesome.
2. Talkie Walkie.
After the middling response of 10,000hz Legend, Air were in a tough spot, having expanded their horizons but without much great material to show for it. That's what makes Talkie Walkie such a nice surprise. I almost want to say it's a return to form, but that little trope doesn't really apply here. It's more like a second breakthrough for Air. Having done all the branching out they want, they use their palette to go back to where their strengths lie: richly produced pop songs that bear a great gift for ambiance. It pays off.
Man, I don't even know where to begin with the highlights here. "Cherry Blossom Girl" is the best love ballad the band ever penned, one of those pretty songs where everything just sounds right. "Venus" is the band's "We Will Rock You," boasting a minimal, pounding beat and the boys' own fragile vocals singing a firm declaration of love (god, this band is so damn sappy). "Alone In Kyoto"....well, you should probably hear the song yourself to really appreciate their knack for piecing a bunch of really pretty sounds together. Long story short, this is their poppiest album. That's a good thing.
1. Moon Safari.
I'm such a mark for this era of the band. It's embarrassing. Hey, sometimes I'm as "screw your conformity, dude, don't just go with the masses' pick" as the next guy. That's not happening in this column, folks. Moon Safari really is that good. Despite all the great work the band has done since, they've still found themselves stuck in the shadow of this album a bit. It broke the band through to a big alternative audience and ensured that they'd be under serious critical scrutiny for good.
Despite the fact that they've gone in different directions since, this is the album that crystalized the sound of Air for many people. It came out in a time where electronic music was dominated by the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy. Moby was still a year away from making chillout music mainstream. So you'd better believe this was unprecedented. The band's essential elements all crystallize here: smooth, pleasurable synths, the bouncy bass, the massive, enveloping production, some light guitar work when necessary, and the deliberate nods to pop music from decades ago. Try listening to "Ce Matin La" and try to guess when the song was recorded. That's the beauty of the band's music, but this album in particular - it rarely fully identifies with any time period. Not one weak track, not one moment where it feels meandering. This album is like laying back and floating into the night skies. It's just perfect.
