Today's Music of the Day is AIR's Pocket Symphony. This album was released in 2007 and was actually purchased on CD by me; I believe I listened to it intently for a few weeks and then put it in a stack of CDs to be pawned / resold, despite not hating it. My priorities being elsewhere, this disc somehow avoided being purged from my residence and survived to make it to the office today.
The overall sound here is subtle, atmospheric, maybe a little foreboding, possibly some pretense. It's kind of a pop album, in the sense that you can slow pop down to the point where it almost puts you to sleep; I would refrain from calling this 'ambient' or 'trance', though. The album is mostly dominated by strings and keys, with vocals on about half the tracks.
This is a solid work, for the most part - the first couple instrumental tracks in particular are very good. I do think that the sound stays in its comfort zone a little too much, though; the group's previous album, Talkie Walkie, did a better job of stretching its boundaries, so Pocket Symphony, for all of its lush composition, is a bit of a letdown. In particular, the later instrumental tracks are nicely layered, but don't have much going on besides the initial blend of sounds. I do also have to call out the vocal tracks, which aren't so great - "One Hell of a Party" in particular is mediocre at best.
Overall, this album probably gets a shrug from me. "Space Maker" and "Once Upon A Time" are excellent; the other tracks fall somewhere between 'ok' and 'meh'.
In Other News:
I still don't have the new Neko Case album. WHAT IN THE NAME OF CRAP IS WRONG WITH ME.