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Graceful songs to commit suicide to.

That’s pretty much my take on Air’s POCKET SYMPHONY the first listen I had with it.  I wasn’t sure if I felt melancholy or like going to sleep for a while.  Either scenario, this album should have been packaged with a prescription for Zoloft.

Nicholas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel, the French maestros behind Air, have created an album that is more so a soundtrack to a lucent dream than anything else.  Every track could be played over a brainwave synchronizer; catalyzing an eerie state of mind for the listener.  You won’t find any single-worthy songs here.  Not because they aren’t good, but because singles usually don’t put the listener into a stupor.  This seems to be the culminating effect of POCKET SYMPHONY.  And what an effect.

It takes several listens to get the feel for, but the pay off is certainly worth it… especially if you suffer from insomnia.  It’s ballsy to release a piece of work that induces slumber and lacks “single” material and think we’ll all want it.  However, we should expect that pretentiousness from the French, of all people.  In this case, the duo of Air hit the mark where others would fail in attempting this minimal approach.  Damn them for doing it so well.  They are experienced, after all, being three traditional Air albums in at this point.  Having released poppier, mainstream work that shares similar electronica roots, I suppose it was time for them to step back on this one and create an album that doesn’t rely on beat loops. 

Providing music to the Sofia Coppola films, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation has cemented their most celebrated sound.  That sound is the ability to create soft landscapes that blanket the listener in aural isolation.  It was the perfect accompaniment to the character development of people in these films that themselves felt  peaked at a high level of isolation, tangibly or otherwise.  In The Virgin Suicides, as the title implies, these characters arrive, intentionally, underground.  Hmmm, maybe POCKET SYMPHONY is Air’s holy grail of suicide embracement.  Eh, just a stupid theory.

If this intrigues you thus far, maybe you should pick up Air’s POCKET SYMPHONY.  I did.  I also bought a lot of sleeping pills that I just took before letting the album play during this write-up.  My stomach is starting to hurt actually.  Maybe I shouldn’t have taken so many.  Yeah.  I think I’m…  Just going to…  Go to sleep.

Mommy?!