Air delivers a breath of fresh dream pop in Chicago

March 24, 2010, at the Riviera Theatre

By Selena Fragassi
Published: March 27th, 2010 | 1:00pm

It wasn’t until Air collaborated with director Sofia Coppola on 2000’s The Virgin Suicides soundtrack that the French duo started to cross over into American music nomenclature. From that exposure and the band’s primary focus on sweeping instrumentals, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit Dunckel were largely categorized as a recorded outfit — great ambience for Indian summer porch soirees and first date “wanna come up to my place” awkwardness, but an actual live show?

All doubts aside, Godin and Dunckel (rounded out by a touring drummer), proved Air is anything but stale on stage. The purposeful intimacy of the show—their first in three years—was quickly superceded by the intense combat waged by an arsenal of instrumentation that, rather than battle against each other, met peacefully at the frontlines of an ambient resistance. Gone were the soft pluckings of “Cherry Blossom Girl” (although the pair delivered on the reinvented track mid-set) for the hard-wired freak-out of “People in the City” and a deftly arranged “Tropical Disease,” which cascaded into a deluge of complicated guitar chords. Although the night fluidly moved across ten decades of material, a large concentration was devoted to the duo’s latest, and arguably most experimental material to date, Love 2 (Astralwerks). Songs like the trademark single “So Light is Her Footfall” were quickly swept under for more daring material like “Eat My Beat” and “Be a Bee.”

There were moments that, frankly, felt almost Danny Elfman-esque (“Don’t Be Light”) perhaps helped by the phanto-morphic images that engaged wide-eyed revelers into sensory comas. Puffs of colorful clouds floated by before transforming into a late winter snowfall that felt as truly dimensional as the music in front of it. If Air is anything, they are expert curators of moods. With just the stimulants encapsulated in their electronic machines and hidden under their fret boards, Godin and Dunckel could lead you astray into a wonderland of emotions without you ever realizing how you lost control. To do that to a viewer watching a movie about suicidal teenagers is one thing; but to wield that power when the same person is merely watching two men in white suits is subliminally stunning.

Opener AM, who will later join fellow Frenchie Charlotte Gainsbourg on tour this spring, was a fitting preview for the main attraction with a captivating mold of retro bossa nova and modern psychedelic fringe that was best rendered on lead-off track, “Self Preservation.” The New Orleans singer/songwriter brought less of an international flair than his tour mates, yet offered one of the best history lessons in American music as he linked together decades of styles into the same song. AM is definitely an act to arrive early for, but is hard-pressed to match up to the power of a band like Air who suffocates their audience—in the best possible way.

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Astralwerks Records