Air's Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicholas Godin have always audaciously straddled the line between high class and high camp. Whether it's embellishing their otherwise lovely compositions with '70s sci-fi blips 'n' bleeps and computerized Stephen Hawking vocals, employing members of the all-synth novelty act the Moog Cookbook, wearing mad magician capes onstage, or populating their music videos with plush monkey dolls and Japanese porn starlets.
But this starry evening, within the hallowed backlit clamshell that is the world-famous, acoustically perfect Hollywood Bowl stage, the cheeky Parisians are on their best behavior. With the exception of a very occasional lapse into electronic androidspeak (during one between-song lull, Godin can't resist croaking, "I am the French robot! I am the special guest!" through his analog-era vocoder) and the intermittent appearance of Dunckel's shiny plastic "keytar" (you know, one of those silly-looking guitar/keyboard-hybrid thingies), tonight's concert is almost entirely kitsch-free.
After all, it's not every day that Air get to play with a full orchestra - this is, in fact, their first such performance, and it's a serious occasion for all involved, from the sophisticates sipping champagne from crystal flutes at the big-ticket linen-covered tables in front to the bohemians reclining in the bargain-seat bleachers with their picnic lunches and boxed wine. This is indeed "A Very Special Evening With Air". But it isn't until the first immense, heart-in-throat moment when the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Beck/Mellow/David Sylvian arranger and "CQ" film composer Roger Neill, in his Hollywood Bowl debut) finally crashes in halfway through Air's first number, "Ce Matin La", that the hushed, reverent audience realizes just how special this night truly is.
On some tracks, the orchestra's arrangements serve only as pleasant ornamentation - all those cellos and violins blending so seamlessly and indiscernibly with the keytar's synthetic strings as to almost be unnecessary - but at other times it seems as if these are unfinished symphonies finally coming to fruition, with the orchestra transforming Air's songs, completing them, making them sound the way they were really always meant to be heard. And while many fans originally seduced by the languid, swooningly romantic grooves of Air's "Moon Safari" have griped about the post-modern frostiness of the duo's subsequent recordings, given tonight's symphonic treatment, Air's later-period songs are just as ripe and glowing with the warm-blooded sensuality of that landmark album's sexiest, slinkiest moments.
The "Virgin Suicides" theme "Playground Love", for instance, is reinterpreted as a lush, exotic instrumental worthy of Academy Award consideration. "Talkie Walkie"'s "Alpha Beta Gaga", on record little more a numbingly repetitive whistling solo, gets a widescreen revamp and comes out sounding like a lost Ennio Morricone masterpiece. And "10,000Hz Legend"'s "Don't Be Light", once a rather stilted and passionless exercise, becomes a feverish, "Fantasia"-esque extravaganza - thanks to the impeccable musicianship of the orchestra, additional bandmates Dave Palmer and Earl Harvin, and identical blonde/elfin surprise guests Jason Falkner and Beck.
In the past, Air have struggled to live up to the glory of "Moon Safari", but here in the Hollywood Hills, as they are pelted with long-stemmed roses from the adoring audience, it's clear that they have actually surpassed it.
