Pocket Symphony will put you to sleep
Published March 6, 2007
Essential to the art of seduction, subtlety will secure a musician as a genius and make him known across college campuses nationwide. Creating ear-friendly tracks that can gently persuade you to keep listening is harder to do than direct approaches.
Where nuance becomes a no-no is when an artist's subtle message is so quiet I'm not even paying attention at all.
Enter Pocket Symphony, the new album from very-cool non-rockers Air. While listening to their new music, it was so subtle I found myself doing homework more efficiently, doing all my dishes and thinking abou how to say the Pledge of Allegiance backward by the syllable.
While listening to Pocket Symphony, I was thinking of everything but the album.
Try as I might, I could not keep Air in the foreground of my head. I would get about three beats into the easy Asian-inspired percussions when a dancing unicorn would slowly drift in, lost from my imagination.
Trust me, I've never been diagnosed with a short attention span (nor was I rolling on mushrooms.) The new album is about half boring.
Pocket Symphony contains the regimented Air style: trendy, stylized music that's a dichotomy of the natural and synthetic. It fades in and out of my ears like the noises you would hear from a over-priced Chicago lounge where people rediscovered skinny ties, bangle jewelry and parkas.
But the appeal there isn't traditionally the music — it's wherever it is you are, with whoever it was that got you into that all-exclusive lounge and what you might have to do in return.
And that's the problem with Symphony: On its own, and it can't stand up.
From a marketing perspective, Pocket Symphony is a great sale. Hey kids, who wants trendy ambient noise you can put on your iTunes and never have to pay attention to again? Add spirits and you've got an insta-cocktail party with a soundtrack for a bash you could never afford.
Some Air-aficionados will say I'm missing the point. Air is supposed to be background music. The band is supposed to be as outrageous as green tea, Arial font and the color taupe. What kind of powerhouse we-will-rock-you ballads did I expect?
Not Pocket Symphony. That title hints at grandeur, something bigger, something triumphant, but nothing really triumphs in this album.
Symphony is that ultra-hip wallflower you see at a party that refuses to dance.
I'm not saying the music has to be more pop and less cool, though that could help. Instead Air held back for sake of caution, and this new album doesn't say anything new.
Pocket Symphony continues in the direction earlier albums pushed the band.
It is heading from discotheque to dreamtime and going from nightclub to goodnight, which makes the band sleepy and ambivalent.
Standing out is "Mer du Japon," which picks up the sound and runs. It bounces along like a subway train through downtown on a Friday night. Listening to this track, you're awake, you're fashionable and you're ready to steal the spotlight away from any of your colleagues.
There is a time for the rest of Pocket Symphony. Peace has its place on your pod, if for nothing else than offering you a chance to mellow out and think. I would argue Air answers the call of a new American culture that is made up of urban middle class 9-to-5ers, working stressful office jobs or running around town, nearly suffocating between the noose of a tie. Come quitting time, I could imagine ambivalence might sound appealing.
Where Pocket Symphony does not belong is in your alarm clock. Give it 30 seconds at 6 a.m., and you'll be right back in dreamland before you can even hit snooze.
