Air
Talkie Walkie
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Air
Talkie Walkie
Astralwerks, 2004
RiYL: Sigur Ros, The Flaming Lips |
Five (5) Ways Talkie Walkie Should Be Used:
1. Cooking dinner with your sweetie. After the first couple of listens, Talkie Walkie seems suited for the role of unobtrusive background music in your kitchen, music that will let you open a bottle of wine, light some candles, and start mincing Chinese broccoli. The music is soothing as synth chords and simple arpeggios calmly fill the gaps between the only occasional lyrics. The opening song, "Venus," is even a love song, but not intense or obscure enough that you need to pay full attention to it, and it's got a neat piano riff that you can bop your head to while you rinse the cutting board.
2. Stuck in a coldly modern airport terminal. Air is synthesizer whizzes Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, two college acquaintances from suburban Paris. One of the most beautiful songs on the album, "Mike Mills" (could it be anyone other than the R.E.M. bassist?) deserves to be played up the road from their hometown, in the ultra-sleek Aéroport Charles De Gaulle, a place where you can ride to your gate on part of an interlocking net of escalators up among the reflecting ceiling girders. The song's oh-so-slightly distorted harpsichord melody is beautiful and relaxing, just the sort of thing that you need to make a shiny metallic bustle feel safely remote, relaxing and homey.
3. Floating aimlessly through space. Talkie Walkie is right album to have playing in your helmet if you get accidentally detached from your space station and are drifting comfortably though inexorably to your starry death. Yes, it is the right album to gradually asphyxiate to. "Surfing on a Rocket" is particular is appropriate; it talks about "surfing," but the song is pure drifting. The vocals are smoothed out and a little bit fuzzy, and even the notes seem to be quite spread out, but it does build to a sort of climax, ending softly with "you'll never see me again."
4. Drifting off to sleep. The danger with music like this is that it can pass from calm and soothing to plain old boring, and Talkie Walkie slips into the realm of the enervating a couple of times. My guess is that if you put Talkie Walkie on when you go to bed, you'll fall asleep during one of the tracks that tries to rely on inane vocals. Probably "Universal Traveler."
5. Getting ready for trade negotiations with the Japanese delegation. Now, I've never been to Japan, but the first few phrases of "Alone in Kyoto" are what I'll play when I go. The song's dual acoustic-guitar parts work beautifully together, and a softly insistent keyboard keeps time and keeps your attention. Even with the humming vocals and the crashing-wave sound effects, the song is less sleepy than it is thoughtful about something or someplace remote and cold.
Five (5) Ways Talkie Walkie Should Not Be Used, Under Any Circumstances:
1. Driving down a deserted highway late at night. We covered the sleepiness part above in number four. If you're the kind of driver who counts on your music to keep you in your lane at 3:00 AM, don't use Talkie Walkie. "Biological," in particular -- with a keyboard part that sounds just like the Japancakes' "Pole Tricks" -- is a true snoozer.
2. Getting pumped up for the season-ending game against your cross-town rival. It would be extremely risky to play Talkie Walkie over the PA at a sporting event. The album's strength is its abundance of calm melodies; some songs lack even that, especially ones that foray unsuccessfully into psychedelia, like "Another Day". Plus, the refrain "just another day" isn't exactly brimming with carpe diem and all that.
3. In an enormous rock arena. Talkie Walkie does try to rock out on one track ("Alpha Beta Gaga"). It's got a slightly energetic guitar line -- but then our friendly French composers start whistling, something which automatically eliminates any song from consideration for "rock anthem" status.
4. As an example of what "electronica" is. Air often gets lumped into the "electronica" category with trip-hoppers Massive Attack and friends, but none of their albums, including Talkie Walkie, fit that bill. It's a pop album, through and through. "Cherry Blossom Girl" showcases all that's good and bad about that designation: it's got great catchy verses, but an uninterestingly familiar intro and a cloying chorus that could have been lifted from an Enrique Iglesias classic.
5. A defense of Frenchness to be used with your overly-patriotic friends. It's been a tough couple of years for the French in America. They've had to suffer "freedom fries" and "France: you're next!" bumper stickers. Well, you're not going to want to play "Run" for your aggressive gun-toting neighbors. The vocals are intoned in a pseudo-French accent that's silly and a little bit annoying, and they won't be able to see past that to the quietly tense music underneath.
We hope this guide to Talkie Walkie has been useful, and that you will use it appropriately and safely. The album is certainly one worth listening to, but placed in destructive or even simply ignorant hands, it can be put to malevolent use. Enjoy, but be careful.
JEFF GRAY | Jeff Gray used to be an important mover and shaker in Chicago, but gave all that up to live on a beach in rural Hawaii. You'll notice him if you're there, he's the one who's very tall and a little bit sunburned. His musical tastes tend towards the mainstream -- Phish, Radiohead, The Strokes -- but he'll argue to the death that those bands are mainstream because they're 100% awesome. Jeff's always on the lookout for the next great pop song, tidbits about Michigan football, and 80's action movies on cable.