We weren’t sure what to expect from a live show by French electronic duo Air. While the band’s three full albums — 1998’s Moon Safari, 2004’s Talkie Walkie, and the just released Pocket Symphony — are among our favorites, they typically make us want to get stoned, drink a bottle of wine and play Scrabble. Could Air’s brand of bliptastic sexy techno translate on a big stage, in front of a mostly sober, seated audience?
It could, and it did.
If the Bee Gee’s had spent a little more time in Paris during the ’70s, and had fancier equipment, they might have sounded like Air, who merge modern disco sensibility with precise electronica. (The band even has disco fashion down, as both Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel wore power blue and white suits). They opened with the suburban balminess of “Radian” followed by the chord-and-clap driven love song “Venus.” Bathed in purple and turquoise light, the duo’s faces were masked by darkness, and golden light glinted off the top’s of their heads, all of which gave “Once Upon a Time” a dream-like aura.
Though “Air” actually stands for Love, Imagine, Dream in French, the celestial quality of the band’s music makes the name seem like more than an acronym. Their live version of “Talisman” soared and roared as if it were stuck inside a jet engine, while “Cherry Blossom Girl” and “Alone in Kyoto”, from Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, became more tumultuous versions of the originals. Closing out their show with an encore that featured old favorites “Sexy Boy” and the propulsive pulsations of “La Femme d’Argent”, Air was bid adieu with a standing ovation.
Before Air whipped us up, then mellowed us out, genre-defying New York rockers TV On the Radio delivered an unusually mellow set. Performing all of their songs acoustically (”It’s so quiet!” lead singer Tunde Adebimpe quipped), the band tambourined, whistled and even bongoed their way through “Province,” “Young Liars,” “Tonight,” and “Dirty Whirlwind” (which featured a totally sweet beat-boxing breakdown). Resident fro-beard-sporter Kyp Malone wah-wah’d mournfully on his guitar and provided his trademark falsetto, but it was Adebimpe’s impassioned vocals that dominated the set.