Air
Trinity College Dublin
★★★☆☆
There’s more than a few middle-aged couples at the Air concert in Trinity College on Sunday night who can’t believe it’s been more than 25 years since the release of Moon Safari. I certainly can’t get my head around it. The album, released in 1998, was an instant retro-futurist classic, kickstarting a French electronic revolution, and soundtracking a zillion dinner parties and cocktail receptions. The duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel pitched their debut album near-perfectly, blending squelchy vintage synth sounds with slinky basslines, adding a sprinkle of fromage and a fistful of cool.
Subsequent albums saw them hone their sound and grow into a sort of Gallic loungecore Pink Floyd, but they never eclipsed the magic of Moon Safari – it just had that je ne sais quoi. Now, a quarter of a century later, we’re gathered at the Summer Sessions in Trinity to hear the band play the album in its entirety, and it doesn’t disappoint.
The stage set could have been built by Le Corbusier – it’s like looking into a space-age bachelor pad or the bridge of a craft in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bassist/guitarist Godin and keyboardist Dunckel are joined by drummer Louis Delorme, the trio all decked out in interstellar white as the familiar bassline of La Femme d’Argent launches us on a journey back into the future with help from a galaxy of lighting effects. Sure, this is a nostalgia trip, but it’s also an exploration, Sexy Boy going quickly into orbit with Sputnik bleeps and vocoder vocals. Happily, All I Need doesn’t need the original vocals of Beth Hirsch to give it lift-off. The band bring it back to its earlier incarnation as an instrumental track, Les Professionnels, then send unearthly echoes of Hirsch’s voice bouncing around the musical spaces.
Kelly Watch the Stars – an ode to Jaclyn Smith’s character in Charlie’s Angels – is a sparkling stomper, while Remember and Ce Matin-Là are given added dimension in a live setting. Inevitably, things begin to settle back in at background music groove, but Godin and Dunckel’s bubbling synths on the album’s closing track Le Voyage de Pénélope bring it firmly back into the foreground.
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For the second half of the show, Air played a selection of songs from three of their more popular albums, 10,000 Hz Legend (Radian; Don’t Be Light), Talkie Walkie (Venus; Run; Cherry Blossom Girl) and their soundtrack for the Sofia Coppola film The Virgin Suicides (Highschool Lover). For an encore they add Alone in Kyoto, which featured on the soundtrack for Coppola’s Lost in Translation, and close with their epic machine manifesto Electronic Performers. A technicolour triumph indeed.
