Air - Pocket Symphony

Oh, intellectual sophistication. Note the lack of exclamation points or emotional mores; there is mood, but it’s detached, intelligent, a companion piece to late night poetry sessions, or a French professor’s automated delivery of deadpan prose on Guy Debord and Western capitalist alienation. But Air are far too concerned with their silk bathrobes and cigarette holders to bother injecting their songs with any kind of movement, so if you aren’t digging the intro keyboard fills and Harry Potter sparkle of, say, “Once Upon a Time,” then toss it out. “Photograph” on the other hand, rejects the band’s supercilious prerequisite and goes all pretty, sacrificing mad promo cred by being the album’s best song. Here’s the problem with Pocket Symphony; it’s got the cold, distant, emotionlessly atmospheric fog to smother the thirteenth floor studio apartment sans furniture it was clearly conceived in, but too many times it delves into bizarrely affable studio effects, giving the album the feel of incongruent fantasy that does little to extend its ethereal intelligence. They also stick Jarvis Cocker in the least provocative role the poor man has ever been forced to endure. It all leads to an album that’s far too impressed with it’s own lack of need to impress, and ends up being less than impressive. Good for a quick romp maybe, but if you’ve got the Eurorail pass, I’m sure the Arctic Monkeys are drinking Sam Adams somewhere in Sheffield. [www.intairnet.com]