This is the first finger-to-buzz-modulated-button that Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin from Air have raised in three years—and it doesn't even buzz. In their latest effort, Air take a classical bend to their breathy electronic soars: the prominent presence of a piano in nearly every song exerts its wooden sound and classical weight, pushing the delicate wisps of the electronic arrangements to the back of the stage. To be sure, Air's sonic spaces were never cluttered to begin with, and Pocket Symphony is no exception. It's still a reticent album, but this collection of songs bares itself through some unconventional sounds, such as the tight twang of the koto and the album's share of twisting minor tones, to ultimately convey a change in Air's direction as taking the road down more craft and less pop.
"Minimalism" and "control" are principal words when it comes to Air, and these terms can service or sever the duo's musical works. At first listen, Pocket Symphony rubs off as being not much more than pretty and likeable tinkling humdrum. Many of the songs are propelled and punctuated by beautifully building and steadily spinning piano riffs—and although Air's songs spin, they twirl like a top on a string: securely reigned and carefully contained. At times, the music is so controlled it shivers cold and cliché, as it rolls through all of "Once Upon A Time" without climax or change. Other times control can be like "Photograph" where a building riff climbs slyly with a sinister element running through, emanating a different kind of heat like a quietly glowering fever.
Along with the layer of electronically screened voices, the usual androgynous vocals murmur in Air's familiar analog ennui. More ascetic than their usual fare, Air's cathedral reverb positions the music between stone slabs and rain. Despite all the cold and quiet, I'm still bobbing my head because this music is beguilingly rhythmic and a little bit (just a teeny tiny bit in that weird noodling way that whacked-out hippies dance) bootylicious—there is a palpable groove. Above all, the subversively widening sonic intervals of volume swells and a subtle layering of instruments reveal the depth of the songs, opening each up like a hidden hole with a mysterious abyss of possibilities. Exciting!
Opening tracks are usually my favorite 'cos first impressions are important to me, and "Space Maker" snags my ear right away. The song's got an icy tautness—not impersonal, just chill to the touch like a sharp breeze. The hollowness of an amplified cowbell taps as steady as dripping water in the cavernous space of the song, altogether creating an ethereal sound. Seemingly an unlikely pair, "One Hell of a Party" features Pulp's Jarvis Cocker crooning rough about a melancholic morning-after. Cocker lays it out with masculine tenderness, and scruffs it up with a tuned-tight koto plucking and strumming brokenly in a slightly pentatonic scale, showing what it feels like to be "strung out with nothing left to say." The album also features Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy, another Britpop luminary, on "Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping" 'cos mourning is best heard through a British inflection. Shifting gears in the upbeat "Mer du Japon," the album truly shines in the striking break mid-song where "Mer du Japon" cracks open and swishes in with the sound of pulling surf. It follows with a glimmering piano moment that complements the sound clip perfectly like light reflecting off water. The koto brings in the muted siren of the two notes on the keyboard synthesizer, and we're back to the beat.
Pocket Symphony has a lot to give in a cleaner way, and the sound of Air's newest release is equivalent to the sight of polished and gleaming ivory. After working with Sofia Coppola on The Virgin Suicides and Lost In Translation as well as with Charlotte Gainsbourg on 5:55 and even scoring a ballet for Angelin Prejocaj, side projects seem to have influenced the group's idea of space, with a focus more on emptying that space than filling it. And I say good for them—it gives the music more room for air to move through.
