Oh my good word. It takes a truely terrible album to score a 1 from me. In fact, I'd be hard pushed to think of another example... Maybe R.E.M's 'Up'. That was stinker. Anyways, this Air album is a complete write off. It's boring from start to finish, and when you have vocalists like The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker guesting, that's a pretty hard thing to achieve. But Air did it. I can't recomend anything about this LP at all. And that's such a shame because 'Talkie Walkie' and 'Moon Safari' were excellent records. Good if you want to put yourself in a coma, though.
As someone who never EVER liked Air before, I find this an interesting introduction to the music seeing that this is the album most fans are offering their dissapointment with. The truth of the matter is that there's something so quietly haunting about the whole effort that it's minimal use of electronics and great use of atmosphere and beauty. Hell whatever, It's made it's mark and is conveniently relevant to my current life.
Probably the most difficult Air album to get right into, the guest vocalists and change of song structures might be a put off but if given enough time the soothing instrumentals and the haiku-inspired vocal tracks balance each other out and coexist. What is especially good about this is the musical expansion that has went into making this. It may seem like a pedestrian album but its the only thing they'll put out for another three years, give it time.
