Entertainment :: Music
Pocket Symphony by Timothy Gabriele
EDGE ContributorSunday Apr 8, 2007 In lead track on 2001’s 10,000 Hz Legend, Air (occasionally parenthetically cited with the addendum (French Band)) boldly declared themselves "Electronic Performers" as if they were directly reacting against a rock hierarchy. At the time, there was little argument about the tag, even though they resembled little else in the dance and techno fields.
With their auspicious debut Moon Safari they had merged an oddly organic metempsychosis of both Serge Gainsbourg and Kraftwerk, creating space to articulate the sexiness of Kraftwerk’s robotic androgyny and to mold warm constructivist architecture around pop weirdoes like Gainsbourg, Michel Polnareff and Lee Hazelwood. Despite its sensual Isaac Hayes strings and horns, proggy E.L.O synths, and slow-groove Booker T. basslines, 1998’s Moon Safari was very much of its era. Hot off Beck’s salvation army eclectism, Stereolab’s retro-lounge futurisms, the kitschy obsessions of Japan’s Shibuya-Kei scene and the rise of the chillout room, Air seemed to embody the late nineties’s embrace of the past with both a knowing ironic wink and a distinguished flattery of the hidden riches the space age bachelor pad’s dusty spindles had to offer.
Since then, Air have tried desperately to "grow up" without compromising that knowing wink, leading to muddled efforts like 50% of 10,000 Hz Legend and some of the best music of the early naughts like 2004’s Talkie Walkie. Talkie Walkie, Air’s last proper album, saw the two-piece of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel consciously try to transform themselves from strictly "Electronic Performers" into a pair of those complex pop weirdoes, trading an electronic exclusivism for a distilled French pride. Key tracks like Cherry Blossom Girl and Universal Traveler were guided more by folky guitars than weightless synths, but their compositions were so meticulously translated into the Air vernacular that one hardly noticed a stylistic difference between those tracks and standard (but still outstanding) analogue Air fare like Surfing on a Rocket and Run.
Now, three years later, Air have returned with Pocket Symphony. From the sound of it, it has become clear that the transformation is complete. Electronic Peformers no more, just about every songs is lead either by those folky guitars or a crystalline piano line.
Lest we think this might be some Kafka-esque mutation, Air quickly assures us that still are, and always will be, Air (French Band). However, with Pocket Symphony, their liquid languor has emerged from the heaters as a porcelain reproduction of itself, as indicated in the breakable figurines adorning the album’s artwork.
The twelve tracks on Pocket Symphony are fragile, pristine and subtle. They harbor an eerie nostalgia that their allusion-heavy pre-Pocket Symphony canon never seemed to possess. The songs contains a solemnity of loss and longing one might not expect from a band known for its professional stance of wearing one eye half-closed with a Mona Lisa smile at all times.
On a superficial level, one might say the album picks up where Talkie Walkie’s closing track Alone in Kyoto (which also appeared on the Lost in Translation soundtrack) left off. But more accurately, the album functions as an extension of that song, spreading its deep loneliness, heartsickness and quiet awe across an album’s worth of sentiments.
Much of the album seems to be spent staring at the sea. Je perds la raison dans la mer du Japan (loosely translated as "I lost my mind in the sea of Japan") Dunckel sings at one point. "Without you, I’m getting lost," "I’m falling in love/ Falling Down/ Down on the Ground," "Time’s getting on/ Time’s over now" he says elsewhere. Dunckel is trapped in the role of Scarlett Johansson staring out her Tokyo hotel window, doomed to never escape and meet up with Bill Murray. By the album’s final track, his idolatry at the "redhead girl" going by who is making "time stand still" is evocative enough to make us believe him, but still tragic in that she has indeed already "gone by" and Dunckel will never race to meet her.
Japan has a strong presence on the album. Not just the country, but also David Sylvian’s early 1980’s new wave group too. Like that band, Air merge traditional instruments with a haunted pitch-bent synthpop. But if Japan’s Tin Drum focused on the deep forests, Air has not even left the shore on Pocket Symphony, being swept up in the power of the Pacific currents.
The appearance of Koto, Shamisen and Glockenspiel work surprisingly well with Air’s aesthetic. Theirs is such an otherworldly affair that the use of such instruments never feels like cultural hijacking. And though almost all of the tracks are inundated with a distinct easternness, these are still pop songs at their core.
What’s notable absent in Air’s attempts to encapsulate discrete moments of personal isolation is their hermaphroditism, which may be troubling to some longtime fans. Up until this album, it has been at the root of much of their appeal, including their sex appeal. Dunckel’s vocals are often purposefully vocoded and distorted to resemble a third sex that transcends the cultural borders of gender and sexual orientation.
Dunckel’s soft, warm and reassuring tones are still attendant on Pocket Symphony, but it’s hard to convey a sensual prowess on an album this weighted with insecurities, specifically, male insecurities. On Once Upon a Time, Dunckel, recalling a past love even draws a line. "I’m a little boy/ You’re a little girl/ Once upon a time." Elsewhere on "Left Bank," his voice splits as he duets with a feminine version of himself. Yet even here, his backup vocals (the feminine voice, resigned to the background) appear to be cutting a dichotomy between two Jeckyl and Hyde selves rather than genetically engineering the ultimate XXY Frankenstein.
No more is the new male-dominated Air more prevalent than in the tracks with guest vocals by Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon. Part of the problem with 10,000 Hz Legend was its unevenness brought on by too many guest vocals and stylistic shifts. Cocker and Hannon do not shift the mood too drastically, but they do unfortunately almost stop the album with recognizably out-of-place vocal styles. Dunckel is an expert at making mellow music sound dynamic, fresh and vivacious. Cocker and Hannon, on the other hand, sound like old, withered crooners trying not fall asleep without a backbeat to compliment them.
It’s unfortunately the only major rift in what could have been the perfect soundtrack to staring at the sea, wondering, yearning, and feeling insignificant in the face of something vast and beautiful. Sort of like what it feels like when one listens to Air for the first time.
by Air
Timothy Gabriele is currently lives in Philadelphia where he is a freelance writer looking to score big on the boulevard of free thought. He keeps track of things and provides the occasional insight at
555 Enterprises, his blog.
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