Air

Air: Sydney Opera House, 26 May 2024

Music / / 4 minutes of reading

We were promised jetpacks. Instead, Gen X got neoliberalism, the New World Order and pre-millennium tension. To soothe it, we got Air’s Moon Safari, the 1998 space-age bachelor pad album that offered a nostalgic passport back to a future that never materialised in quite the way we expected. Immediately, Air (French duo Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel) were everywhere – not in our faces, but part of our very atmosphere: in shopping malls, on soundtracks, in every cafe and lounge.

Inevitably, Moon Safari dwarfed everything the duo has produced since, and Air haven’t made an album since 2012’s brief sojourn Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip To The Moon), the title of which suggested they knew they would never escape the shadow of their debut. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, they’ve leaned in, playing the album in its entirety and in order, plus an extra set’s worth of songs from their half-dozen albums.

This weekend, as part of Vivid, it was Sydney’s turn. To see and hear Moon Safari recreated in the Sydney Opera House was a trip indeed, amplifying a sound as exquisitely sculpted and immediately identifiable as the building in which it was performed. What that performance revealed was the humanity behind this highly orchestrated, but almost entirely synthetic music – the secret of Air’s success in the first place.… Read more..

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Le provocateur

Music / / 6 minutes of reading

Immediately after cutting their striptease classic Je t’aime … Moi Non Plus in 1969, French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg and his English paramour, Jane Birkin, adjourned to the restaurant of their Parisian hotel. Gainsbourg, full of mischief, convinced the staff to play the record. As the song built, literally, to its climax – with the sound of Birkin in the throes of apparent orgasm – the room went still.

“Everybody’s knives and forks were in the air, suspended,” Birkin later told Gainsbourg’s biographer, Sylvie Simmons. “Gainsbourg said, ‘I think we’ve got a hit.’” And for decades, Je t’aime was the erotic novelty hit for which Gainsbourg was best known – at least outside of France, until a heart attack ended his life aged 62, in 1991.

Four years later, Melbourne musician Mick Harvey – then a key member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – released Intoxicated Man, a collection of Gainsbourg covers, translated into English. In the liner notes, he explained “what might otherwise be an unnecessarily enigmatic project,” professing his bewilderment that Gainsbourg’s work was virtually unknown outside of French-speaking countries.

These days, it’s a different story. Gainsbourg’s legacy is everywhere: from season two of Mad Men (a jingle for a coffee company is a reworking of his racy 1964 single Couleur Café) through the work of everyone from French band Air to Beck to Arcade Fire.… Read more..

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Tour de farce

Music / / 14 minutes of reading

Richard “Evil Dick” Hunt is doing a handstand. We’re in a plush dressing room at a venue called Le Cargo – it’s so cushy that it even has the band’s name on the door, an unheard-of event – and Hunt, by way of limbering up, is hoisting his small frame over a large, comfy, suspiciously new-smelling corner couch.

I watch warily as Hunt, who’s already flying on a combination of cough syrup, cognac (to protect his shredded voice) and beer, inverts himself aloft. This may not end well. Facing away from the wall, he gets himself balanced precariously on his head. Then, unsteadily, he begins to stretch out his little legs.

Le Cargo is a major performing arts complex in Caen, a couple of hours’ drive north-west of Paris. HITS – a full-tilt, five-piece rock & roll band from Brisbane, Australia – have taken all before them on their first European tour. It’s the second-last gig of a four-week adventure that’s seen the band play 20 shows in less than a month.

Every Friday night at Le Cargo, the local government subsidises free concerts for up-and-coming groups in a room that would comfortably fit 450 punters. Everything is arranged to make young bands look and feel like stars: there’s a high stage, drum riser, light show, and the sound is excellent.… Read more..

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