Singles

Air - Stop Me

Charlie Southwell 27/03/2007

Rating: 1/5

Air are the only French import that seem to have had any impact on our popular culture in the last few years. With a laid back lounge pop and ambient dance sound, they settled nicely onto people's radar with their great debut album “Moon Safari”, announcing themselves as a name to look out for.

“Once Upon A Time” is their new single off their fourth album “Pocket Symphony”; a four-minute track that opens with a charmingly nice classical arpeggio. But it's ruined by inane repetition, albeit with a lovely floating vocal melody, it haunts and twirls around, the problem is development, and the serious lack of it.

It isn't a boring tune, its complex in terms of its instrumentation and chord sequences. But what's the point in a small amount of musical intelligence? Is it just an attempt to rub everyone's faces in it for four minutes, so that it becomes the norm? Yeah it sticks in your head if you last past the 30-second mark. Sadly I listened to it all, in the misguided hope that it would transform into something of interest: I was desperately hoping for some classical influences to deviate, something to invert the melody or maybe an intriguing resequence of the theme, maybe even development of the main motif, similar to baroque era compositions. BUT NOTHING…

This has to be the most exasperating song I've had the misfortune to listen to, of late. Craving, No, needing it to change. It's a naive composition for such a talented duo, so I must have missed the point!


Released 12/03/07