When they emerged as Air in 1998 with their debut LP, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel were plundering the worlds of electronic rock (the works of Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre), prog rock (Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd) and symphonic pop (Burt Bacharach, Andre Popp), fashioning not a bloated and grotesque hybrid, as that list might suggest, but rather a softly cushioned, highly oxygenated, pop dream.
'Moon Safari' was the sound of a bench being (carefully) marked. Since then, Air have delivered the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, second album '10,000 Hz Legend' - which reflected the influences of ELO and Supertramp while moving into darker, less playful territory – and worked with Alessandro Baricco on 'City Reading (Tre Storie Western)', providing a backdrop for the Italian author's spoken words. Time now, then, for the 'difficult third album'.
With 'Talkie Walkie', Air are headed back where they came from. That they do this without actually retracing their own footprints and have produced an album with its own delicate but distinct hallmarks is a measure of their talent. Most obvious is the fact that Godin and Dunckel themselves provide most of the vocals, rather than a troupe of guests whose contributions are heavily treated. There's nothing that approaches the devastatingly immediate 'Sexy Boy'; rather, 'Talkie Walkie' delivers its pleasures gradually, revealing more and more with each sweet and subtle unravelling.
As you might expect of an ex architect and ex mathematician, Air are accomplished technicians, but that's not to deny the warm soulfulness of their sound nor their understated exploration of emotion's darker side. There are echoes of Nick Drake and Kevin Ayers (on 'Alone In Kyoto', which features in Sofia Coppola's current movie, 'Lost In Translation'), of Godley And Creme ('Run'), and of Ralph Vaughn Williams and Mozart - had they been reared on electronica ('Mike Mills').
What has become defined as the classic 'Air sound' appears just twice - with the sweetly upswept, but somewhat thin 'Venus' and the gently groovy 'Surfing On A Rocket', which could easily be from the 'Moon Safari' sessions and accordingly sounds somewhat dated. These, though, are minor quibbles; 'Talkie Walkie' will have fans in a euphoric daze and return waverers to Air's irresistibly woozy fold.
