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Air - Love 2
| Pitchfork |
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There are a few things I'm impressed with Air for doing: resuscitating crusty, decades-old Moog blorps amidst the frenzy of millennial techno-utopian futurism, turning a new generation on to a certain vintage Gallic notion of jet-set sophistication, and getting indie- and punk-dominated college rock stations to play what essentially amounted to lounge prog. Most of all, there's the way they composed their music as an unapologetically frothy sort of cheese-pop without letting it get dominated by snorting insincerity or self-conscious hokeyness. You could still hear the kitsch, but it wasn't the driving force, and they had a sneaky way of lulling you into forgetting you weren't "supposed" to like this kind of thing. Hell, lots of people actually had sex to Moon Safari, which is about as unironic as you can get. (At least I hope they were being unironic.) A half-decade of Balearic/glo-fi/'lude-house has since refined that mellow aesthetic to the point where taste-conscious end-runs around potential irony have become increasingly unnecessary. But while that refinement applied readily to the subtle songcraft of Talkie Walkie and Pocket Symphony, both of which provided ample evidence of Air's vintage pop smarts, they've somehow stumbled their way into a pit of lite-FM treacle on their new album. Love 2-- as titles go, a bad pun disguised as a sequel nobody needed-- is a dopey little slice of not-much that feels like a noodly rendering of yacht-pop weightlessness. Much has been made about Air's new independence in the process of making this album; it's the first one to come out of their new recording studio, Atlas, and the first to be written and recorded without the input of any major outside producers (though they still brought in Moon Safari engineer Stephane "Alf" Briat to tinker behind the boards). Far be it from me to accuse Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin of being a couple empty vessels who need a Nigel Godrich to whip them into shape, but maybe they could've used someone looking over their shoulders to warn them away from indulging in some bad ideas....full text |
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| Independent |
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Love 2 is a return to the source for "Air French Band". (It's so much more satisfying to call them that awkward album-sticker name, don't you think? Just as the disambiguating "The London Suede" is actually a better name than Suede.) On their fifth studio album – sixth, if you include the Virgin Suicides soundtrack – you won't find celebrity collaborators, and you won't find crazy Japanese instruments. Instead, Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin have returned to the womb-like analogue warmth of their favourite tools – Moogs and fuzz boxes, Theremins and school recorders – to create a coherent suite of mood music that is both heady and intricate, with pretty efflorescences and overpowering climaxes, but essentially utopian and optimistic. It cements their place as a kind of Franco-Kraftwerk (right down to the fact that Love 2 was recorded in their own Kling Klang-style purpose-built studio, Atlas, in the banlieues of Paris). Another thing you won't find here is a hit. The single "Sing Sang Sung", featuring the gamine gambolling of an uncredited female vocalist, is the closest thing to a pop song, but there's no "Kelly Watch the Stars" or "Sexy Boy" here, not even a "Cherry Blossom Girl" or "Wonder Milky Bitch"....full text |
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| Entertainment |
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Having long established themselves at the vanguard of atmospheric pop and chillout music before people knew what chillout music even was, there's little for Air to do these days except enjoy themselves. Many would deem such behaviour as a lack of progress, but the simple truth is that Air are so good at what they do, that their musings often come across as effortless. 'Love 2', the ultra-cool Parisian duo's sixth studio album, is another stellar effort from Godin and Dunckel, particularly after the slow-burning 'Pocket Symphony'. With its focus primarily on ambience, there are no distracting guest appearances by the likes of Jarvis Cocker here, and the album is all the better for it. Several songs incorporate semi-sleazy, Hendrix-like guitar sounds beautifully into their slinky bodies ('Do the Joy'), and you can easily imagine a band like The Animals envying the swinging riffs of the brilliant 'Be a Bee' and 'Eat My Beat'. Then again, curveballs are thrown with songs like 'Missing the Light of Day', its male/female vocal breakdown and squidges/bleeps whipped into an electro pudding, and the beautiful 'Love', a song wrapped in layers of bass, cotton wool, glockenspiel and birdsong....full text |
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