Air
Bimbo's 365 Club, San Francisco, CA
September 19, 2007

I remember first hearing Air's debut album Moon Safari in 1998 and marvelling at the way it conveyed the mood of its opening sample, the sound of rain washing along a city street. Somehow i'd managed to miss all of their Bay Area live performances until now. V saw them with Gary a few months back at the Masonic Auditorium and was blown away. The three of us got tickets for their show at Bimbo's, although my colleagues repeatedly told me there was no way their current show could compete with that perfect past gig. I kept my hopes up. We got to Bimbo's just after the band went on (i hope!), in the middle of "Talisman". Aka, the song playing while Simon is having sex with two girls and watching the hotel burn down around him in Go!. I noticed during the band's set that many of the tracks build through repetition and layering, in a manner similar to LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends". This was true of the supremely cool classic "La Femme D'argent" and several other tracks the duo performed. I was amused by the minimal banter with the crowd, particularly when Nicolas Godin used a computerized voicebox to say "we are very happy to be here", among other things. Old favorites "Kelly Watch the Stars" and "Sexy Boy" were resplendent, the latter of which i was surprised to find used not synthesized sounds but modulated voices to generate the opening "ooooo waaaaa, ooo ooo waa waa" riff. The highlight for me was the haunting live version of "Highschool Lover" from the Virgin Suicides Soundtrack, a brilliant example of mood in music and a track that perfectly captures the futility and melancholy of the film and book. True to their word, V and Gary weren't as impressed as at the last show, but i was supremely contented with my first encounter with the French pair.

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