AIR: Love 2

AIR: LOVE 2 (2009)

1) Do The Joy; 2) Love; 3) So Light Is Her Footfall; 4) Be A Bee; 5) Missing The Light Of The Day; 6) Tropical Disease; 7) Heaven's Light; 8) Night Hunter; 9) Sing Sang Sung; 10) Eat My Beat; 11) You Can Tell It To Every­body; 12) African Velvet.

Well, this is just another AIR album, and the difficulty of writing about each following one grows almost exponentially. If the reader is already familiar with it, there won't be anything enlightening in my review — not in the smallest degree. If not, here's just a brief listing of a few small out-of-the-ordinary impulses that I have managed to log:

— the unexpectedly heavy opening, as 'Do The Joy' fades in over a gruff, distorted bass line and sci-fi synthesizer whooshes that suggest Hawkwind nostalgia;

— the almost surf-rock style (although leaning towards the "ominous" effect) of 'Be A Bee'; I can just imagine its guitar parts played by the likes of Link Wray or Nokie Edwards;

— the innocent happiness of 'Heaven's Light' and 'Sing Sang Sung', two of the duo's best dream-pop contributions so far; 'Sing Sang Sung', released as the single, got quite a serious amount of flack for pushing the "fluffy" side of the duo too far, but the way I see it, as long as we have true crea­tivity, no fluffiness can be excessive enough to kill off the work of art — and, besides, the "fluffiness" is quite self-ironic, as can be easily noticed by anyone who has also noticed that Dun­ckel chants 'thing thang thung' in the chorus.

Other than that, I noticed nothing and I noticed everything. Love 2 is no better and no worse, no different from and not the same as any other AIR album ever released. We can hate this approach if we want to, but we must keep it alive, if only for the reason that not too many bands in our days keep using the same number of instruments on their records — and still end up with their records in the "Electronic" bin. Thumbs up, even though I'm not entirely sure why.