Review: Air's "Le Voyage Dans La Lune"

If you need me to save you the trouble of having to read an entire review to get to the two main points I want to make, then let me save you the trouble:

1. This is a really cool sounding album.
2. Comparing it to Air's previous albums is missing the point entirely.

Reportedly recorded in about a months time and created to act as the soundtrack to the hand-colored restored version of the classic silent film of the same name, this album is essentially the expanded and full version of the soundtrack that you hear for the 13 or so minutes of the actual film.  Those points, in my opinion, are key in listening to this album.  To listen to this and complain that it fails to measure up to Moon Safari or to expand on the material covered on Talkie Walkie is to assume that this is a traditional Air album.

Perhaps the ideal way to perceive this album is to not look at it as a new Air album at all.  It's a collection of songs by Air, yes.  However, in serving as a film's score, it can't simply be a set of songs.  This has to draw from the visuals and themes in the film itself.  In that regard, Air nails it.  Every song on this album carries a combination of timeless wonder and modern...well, Air-ishness.

For those of you who are expecting and wanting a new album, there are definitely moments on this album that are going to satisfy you.  "Sonic Armada" and its unwieldy synths harkens back to the Moon Safari era, while "Parade" melds Air's best organic rock sounds with its most quirky electronic elements.

"Seven Stars" is easily one of the strongest songs here, and is also perhaps the most easily enjoyable song for anyone uninterested in a science fiction film score (but, then again, why would you like Air in the first place?).  Beach House's Victoria Legrand's vocals are spacy enough on their own, but compared with Air's lush sounds, the song just feels so right and so perfect.  In contrast, "Who Am I Now?," which features Au Revoir Simone, actually sounds like it could only belong in a film score (or, maybe, a Belle and Sebastian album from the year 2450).

That point brings me back to what I was saying in the beginning.  Songs like "Who Am I Now?", "Decollage" and "Retour Sur Terre" (among others) are songs that offer little to the listener who only wants to accept this as a new Air album.  In the context of a film score and in the context of the film itself, every note works well, complimenting the original film while making it something new and original at the same time.  Additionally, at about a half hour, the album has a tendency to fly right by, causing a lot of the best moments to be lost in the general briefness of most of the tracks.

Still, all this talk of New-Air-Album vs. Air-Soundtrack aside, if I could name one reason why I enjoyed this album (for lack of a better word) so much, it would be that Air goes above and beyond just making music to accompany a film.  The music here captures the imagination and sounds simultaneously majestic and whimsical.  If I tried to imagine what the music of the future...or the music you would listen to on your voyage to the moon...was to sound like, from the perspective of an imaginative early 20th century filmmaker, I don't think this strays too far from what I imagine at all.

8/10