New Vibrations: Air

When I first started getting into electronica, Air was a big deal. If Zero 7 was the Beatles of Chill, Air was the Led Zeppelin. They brought it to a new level, every song an exercise in relaxation and serenity.

Moon Safari (1998) and Talkie Walkie (2004) stand out among the vast legions of chill albums as triumphs. So, you can imagine the expectations I'd laid on Le Voyage dans la Lune (2012). Besides the basis it has on George Méliès' 1902 film, it looked, like many of their past works, to be a step in the right direction.

Well, it's not. I can't say it's a step in the wrong direction. But I can't really say it's a step in any direction.

(Which, by the way, plays into my commentary on electronica in general).

See, most artists are distinguished by one album and then either fail to recreate it over and over, or radically diverge from it such that they never produce anything as wholly worthwhile again. (Some examples of this are RJD2 and DJ Shadow).

But Air has never been like that. Each album they make has some new value, some new force that expands on their sound. And, at their core, they put out chill electronica. They practically invented that genre.

So, surprise! The laid-back tempoes and rhythms aren't in this album. Ok, they're in two tracks, but two tracks out of 11 isn't a great ratio for a group that defines themselves on chill. And, thankfully, they haven't disappeared into the dubstep craze (which isn't to say I don't like it, but, please, electonica is not and should not be dubstep).

Man, look at me dance all around this bush. Look, the album isn't bad. It's pretty passable. It won't change your life, and, if you like Air, you might want to give this baby a listen. But most of you won't want to. You'll stick with "Lava" (by far the best track on the album) and maybe "Moon Fever" and "Sonic Armada" and call it a day. And you wouldn't be wrong to.

Now that I think about it, Le Voyage dans la Lune is a pretty heavy cross between Zero 7 and Pink Floyd. Which sounds great on paper. But if you actually think about it, they make a pretty cacophonous baby.

Air wants to be slow and punctuated, like Floyd, but with a very tame and consistent sound like Zero 7. And when you're trying to build a song to a climax slowly, it really hurts to try and put big powerful beats in there every few bars.

The core of the bad stuff in the album is almost entirely drums for reasons that I just talked about. Everything else is good or at least passable.

Vocals are nice and melodic, like always. The piano is a great, warm sound, while the synthesizer and guitar-work range from not-terrible to a little bit better than average. But then you add drums to these songs and they lose so much.

There's no such thing as a long, deep, chill drum sound. And if there is, Air certainly stayed far away from it. Drums are percussion instruments which means they're percussive. They make a lot of sound then no sound. And chill music wants to make a little sound for a long time. There really aren't drums in their other albums, or at least not enough to be memorable. Instead, in songs like "Femme d'argent," they created their percussion with slower bass riffs. What happened to that?

Here, I'll list out the songs with terrible drums that you should skip. Oh, isn't that convenient, they're all in the first half of the album. Cool. So, start the album at track five ("Moon Fever") and you're pretty much golden.

There's a few odds and ends in there ("Decollage" I'm looking at you) but the rest of it is pretty solid. Luckily, in the day and age of iTunes, you can forgo the whole album in favor of just a few songs.

And, listen, as much as I love saying "Get this whole album and listen to the thing from front to back, even the crappy stuff in between" I can't in good conscience as a critic recommend that.

So go ahead. Get the singles. Get the singles and run.