CD Review of Moon Safari by Air
Recommended if you like
Zero 7, Melt, Airscape
Label
Astralwerks
Air: Moon Safari

Reviewed by Jason Thompson

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T
hough it seemed to be one of the best ambient-based works at the time of its release, looking back at Air’s debut album Moon Safari now reveals the same inconsistency that has plagued many of the French duo’s works. Save for the tasty soundtrack for “The Virgin Suicides,” Air’s appeal has always been one of style over substance. It’s understandable. After all, who else was/is doing this sort of thing at such a highly visible and commercial rate? Most ambient artists are more than happy to fly under the radar, being featured on whatever compilation fans of the genre are picking up that week. But Air arrived at the end of the ‘90s, around that same time that the major labels were trying to grasp onto techno and its variants as the next big thing and managed to move some units. Like Moby, Air got some good exposure thanks to their music being featured in commercials (lead track “La Femme d’Argent” was used in a hair product ad, for example), proving that they did have the marketability where it counted most: the short attention spans of TV viewers everywhere.

But like a lot of other ambient grooves, Air Safari suffers from hit-and-miss moments. While “La Femme d’Argent” sounds freaking great at first, stretched out at over seven minutes, it becomes more than a little mundane in the long run. The highlight of this album has probably always been the great “Kelly Watch the Stars,” a vocoder-filled, cheesy homage to ‘70s European electronica and disco. At the time, the Moog Cookbook did a great remix of the tune (recently collected on the 10th anniversary edition for this disc), further exposing its base kitsch value. On the other hand, for every great track like that, you had another subpar one like “Sexy Boy” that sounded like the group wasn’t even bothering to get off the lounge accoutrements to make something tasty. As if Air had a pre-programmed button called “Hip” that they hit and just left on autoplay for a few minutes.

Then there are the two tracks that vocalist Beth Hirsch guests on. Both “All I Need” and “You Make It Easy” are more or less interchangeable, coming across as nondescript, bland sorts of songs that could have been featured in some French art house film. But maybe that’s the whole point; then again, being so obviously blasé only extends the hip quotient further, and not in a good way. It’s this sort of blank exposition of an in-the-know attitude that has always kept Air from being taken as completely seriously as they seem to want to be. But do the cocktail crowds even care? Does it matter to the fans that the music goes great with prettily colored drinks and small talk and not much else really matter? Probably not.

And it probably doesn’t matter to the same listeners that the drum machine beats in “Remember” cheesily echo the terribly dated sounding beats on the Beach Boys’ “Do It Again,” a song about – surprise – cheesy nostalgia. It’s when Air isn’t trying so damn hard that it succeeds much better, as on the tranquil “Talisman” and “Le Voyage de Penelope,” where the grooves come easily and aren’t so reliant on the sounds of 20 years before. But again, what was old was once new again at the time, and if you’ll recall this was also around the same time that the whole space-age bachelor pad lounge craze was still going strong, so there were a number of elements that helped Moon Safari go a lot further than it probably deserved.

Since their debut, Air have bounced around with their original formula. 10,000 Hz Legend wasn’t the success out of the gate that Moon Safari was, so Talkie Walkie was made in a rather sympathetic fashion for those who wanted more of the debut. Though critically acclaimed, it had the same shortcomings that this album had, so if nothing else, the group was maintaining a “successful” track record. Though less annoying overall, Air is the sort of group that falls into the same category as Enigma; have a strong debut album (at the time) and then vary the formula with each subsequent release just enough to justify its own existence instead of calling it a day. Yet there will always be room for music like Air’s, and possibly that’s the most profound thing about the group. Like its namesake, the group just is.

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