TALKIE WALKIE - FIRST REVIEW OF NEW ALBUM (Air in general)

Member Name: beedubblyer

Product:	Air in general
Date:	24/10/03 (369 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It IS a grower..., "Venus", "Cherry Blossom Girl"

Disadvantages: i want to love this, but can only manage a half-hearted "liking" of it, "Another Day", "Biological"

Like most people, i first heard about Air when MOON SAFARI found its way onto every coffee table and every post-club chillout lounge in the land. It was a thing of mesmerizing beauty, alright..!

But! having played that album to death, and despite being wowed by parts of the soundtrack to the VIRGIN SUICIDES, i was mystifyingly uninterested in 10,000HZ LEGEND, the follow-up album proper. Which brings us, by way of an "ooh!", a "hmmm??" and a "so what", to Air's latest offering, TALKIE WALKIE.

1) Good title.

This should be an event. French Band Air is one of those acts that regularly attract great expectations. And by great, i mean HUGE.

2) Critics expect them to bowl us over at every turn.

But!

3) They don't.

Anyways, back to the album. In short, there are some lovely moments here, but nothing as essential to your audio-spiritual harmony as "All I Need", "Le Voyage de Penelope", or "Playground Love".

"Mike Mills" is a case in point. On a first listen, it doesn't do a great deal. It starts out like an electronic-pastoral(?!) version of Pachelbel's Canon. But it is a grower. There's some delicious piano, and after several changes of instrumentation it ends up sounding more like an update of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, somehow. (But who'd name a short history of classical music after the bassist from REM, anyways?)

Similarly, "Universal Traveller" eventually wins you over with its gentle wibbling and cooing noises. 4) But there's a nagging fear that this is somehow? inconsequential.

There are some devilishly catchy tunes here, if you give them room to breathe. "Surfin' On A Rocket" is restrained, but its more dramatic middle eight injects enough life for the tune to stick with you. And i do defy you to resist the infectiously jaunty whistling in "Alpha Be
ta Gaga".

5) Elsewhere, you could accuse the bad of a wee bit of aimlessness.

"Run" has a lovely ambience, but none of the compelling nature its moniker suggests. The closing track, "Alone In Kyoto" (is it a sly dig at the damage GWBush's USA did to the progress of the environmentally-essential Kyoto Protocol?) is a sequence of delightfully pretty melodies that waft unassumingly by. 6) It's beautiful, maybe, but it feels a wee bit pointless. (Like Heidi Klum. Or is that just me?)

"Another Day", in particular, though cut from a different, more sombre and suspenseful cloth, does nothing for me. And despite a banjo lick that sounds as if it was slowed down from the theme to THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, the lament of "Biological" is inappropriately cold and unaffecting.

7) i guess i'm sticking with the downside, but there are great moments. 8) First track "Venus" is fantastic, a stately, strangely moving ballad, with a deep, chiming piano part. 9) "Cherry Blossom Girl", too, is lushly romantic.

But! 10) we're talking 4 or 5ive good tracks out of 10, which is not an inspiring hit rate.

This is pretty but inessential stuff. Give it a whirl, but try before you buy, people!

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