AIR The Virgin Suicides (Astralwerks)

AIR

The Virgin Suicides (Astralwerks)

What's in a name? With French duo Air, what you see is what you get, which in this case at least, isn't much. Fans of the band (keyboardists Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin), who cut their teeth on the pair's winningly subtle Moon Safari debut in 1998, will find this slight Quaalude of a disc several notches down from Air's usual playful inventiveness. There's none of the group's loungey, retro pop stylings; it's pure film score drivel all the way. Not to disparage film scores as a genre -- some of the best music ever penned ended up as pre/ post-dialogue filler for some of the worst movies ever made -- but as a stand-alone disc minus the filmic trappings, Air's The Virgin Suicides is the aural equivalent of one hand clapping. Granted, Air make the most of their Moog-happy synthesized soundscapes, but without the benefit of any identifiable songs per se, this hearkens back to the dizzily dull wank daze of early Pink Floyd. Some people, Air fanatics among them, may herald this as the second coming of French epic cool; along with fellow countrymen Daft Punk, Air have been tagged with the label of the Francophile's great white electronic hope. Both bands hit the international electronica scene at more or less the same time, though the former's massive, wiggy beats were (and are) a far cry from the grad-student prog rock of the Air boys. Maybe it all comes together with the filmic images unspooling in the background, but as the next chapter in the Air story, The Virgin Suicides is more Air Supply than anything else.