Air

Although the men of Air have never been the most explosive Frenchmen on the planet, there are times on the album Pocket Symphony where they feel more like air with a lowercase “a” than Air, the brains behind the sad yet swanky space-pop classic Moon Safari. The title itself is an obvious nod to Brian Wilson’s pocket symphony, or “Good Vibrations.” But that may have been a better fit for Moon Safari, while this album may be better summed up by the title of one of its mellower moments, “Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping.” Not that that’s a bad thing. Yes, the lead track, “Space Maker,” could cause flashbacks to the golden age of dentist office music, and some other tracks are just as incidental, but the album’s not without its share of mesmerizing new contenders for that Air anthology. The traditional Japanese instrumentation is a nice touch on ballads as dreamy as “Once Upon A Time,” and sending out for Jarvis Cocker to do what David Bowie might have done on “One Hell Of A Party” (a melancholy mood-piece that feels like an outtake from Pulp’s This Is Hardcore) was a brilliant move.