Album Review: Air - Pocket Symphony

This post will be a review of the album Pocket Symphony by Air.


Cover of Pocket Symphony

About the band: Air is a French duo, which is literally an acronym for the words Amour, Imagination and Rêve, or Love, Imagination, and Dream. Their music tends to be electronic, and downtempo. Influences could be Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream.

About the album: This album came out in March 2007. The most famous song is Once Upon a Time. This is a much chiller side of Air than normal. Some people could call it "boring" but I don't believe that it is. Some songs are a little more interesting than others though.

About the tracks:
1: Space Maker: This introduction is instrumental. With several interesting sounds, including guitar, random percussion, pianos and synthesizers, strings and much more. This is a very chill song and sets the mood nicely for this album.
2: Once Upon A Time: Yes, this was their single from this album, and supposedly their most famous track. Honestly I feel that the song gets a little repetitious, but it still deserves a listen. This song has a glockenspiel, vocals, haunting piano and strings, and several other electronic sounds.
3: One Hell of A Party: This fairly slow song and superb vocals done by Jarvis Cocker (in Pulp, the members of Air's first band together) is incredible. I imagine it would be amazing to play during cleaning up after a big party, hungover. So surreal and well, incredible.
4: Napalm Love: A great little song, and much more upbeat than most of the album. It has JB (Jean-Benoî) Dunckel, Air's lead female singer providing the main melody.
5: Mayfair Song: An awesome chill song, this song is mainly instrumental, and has some crazy cool sounds. The piano is the same haunting-and-still-interestingly-happy style that Air uses plenty in this album. The riffs are spectacular in piecing together an interesting melody.
6: Left Bank: If you like Elliott Smith or John Vanderslice, you'll probably like this song. Very moving acoustic guitar and pure vocals. This is actually one of their least electronic songs that I've heard. Still is great.
7: Photograph: This is an excellent example of most of the album's feel, as it is chill electronic with various percussion and guitar. This is the male singer of Air, Nicholas Godin, singing at first. The harmony between Nicholas and JB, later, is common in Air's sound. Decent, but there are better tracks on this album.
8: Mer du Japon: This upbeat song features Japanese instruments such as the koto. The singing and piano provide the Air "haunt" and the fast beat keeps you rockin on and on to this song.
9: Lost Message: This song is a little sleep-inducing, which may be a great thing for you to listen to after a long day. But, this may be a little too slow for your tastes.
10: Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping: This singer is again a guest singer, Neil Hannon. This is a decent chill guitar/piano/vocals combination. It sounds classical at times.
11: Redhead Girl: Redhead Girl is an amazing song. Perhaps this is the best track on Pocket Symphony, in my opinion. You can hear awesome sounds that are nearly impossible to identify. Thankfully, wikipedia.org lists the parts for us: vocals, rhodes, synthesizers, piano, voice pad, guitars, bass, memory moog, wind chimes, glockenspiel and koto. Talk about an eclectic mix. This is on the downtempo side of Air, and certainly fits the Pocket Symphony mindset.
12: Night Sight: This is perhaps the slowest and most chill song on this album. I have this song in my "sleepy" playlist to help me fall asleep every night. It's awesome, just recognize the name of the song does include "night" in the word... and perhaps you shouldn't listen when driving :P

So there you have it. Check out this artist, even if you only like the faster songs on this album. Here's some awesome songs from their other albums.
Air - Alpha Beta Gaga
Air - Don't Be Light
Air - Run
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