Chic urban disco lizards? Hip Parisian dancefloor chill-out cats? Aloof and debonair lords of the electro manor? Perhaps. On a good day, when nobody’s asking too many questions. Wolves in sheep fur coats when they do. But after ’10,000 Hz Legend’ nobody could be heard denying they were a prog band with a makeover who just got it right. Their debut ‘Moon Safari’ itself was quintessentially no more than a jazz-funk lounge odyssey, but dressed up like it was going out to the opera, carrying that little bit of class beyond your reach, holding an irresistible glint in its eye. But while it was essentially no different in places to the lounge-lit shuffle of say Manchester’s Rae & Christian it stood head and shoulders above through an adorable child-like innocence and sense of awe in every approach, like every time they hit their moog in ‘Sexy Boy’ was the first time. And it wasn’t difficult to understand why people fell for that.
Needless to say that time has taken their innocence away from them, ambling satisfactorily through extra curricular ventures like The Virgin Suicides soundtrack and the City Reading project has offered them experience and a comfortable benchmark. And now with their third full length album proper they have veered back from the starchy discomfort of their progressive indulgence and become Air again. The Real Air? The ones we permitted them to be? Only older. A good thing? In the sense that it feels initially soft to the touch, malleable, kind, yes. But in the sense that it also brings jarring matured textures of sadness and contemplation, as in ‘Mike Mills’ and ‘Surfing On A Rocket’, not quite so.
For that wasn’t what was cherished about ‘Moon Safari’s magic. And though they add these extra emotional strings to their bow, they’re firing sideways, which is the main problem. They no longer sound like explorers. One feeling has almost replaced another without too significant a change. ‘Cherry Blossom Girl’ for instance is a beautiful sparkling track, but not nearly as beautiful and sparkling as ‘All I Need’. When they use a vocoder you don’t feel they’re doing it because it amazes them. There are of course moments, most tracks in fact have their moments, like the Kings Of Convenience-esque plucked-guitar of ‘Universal Traveller’ and the rolling secluded ambiance of the Lost In Translation soundtracking ‘Alone In Kyoto’. If only all those moments didn’t have to be put in context. Highly satisfying, but not magic.