Air ft. Jarvis Cocker and Charlotte Gainsbourg - The Duellist (March 2007)
One more duet, and then she’s on her own.
5:55 was released in August 2006, the initial shot of a entire volley by its set of collaborators. Darkel, JB Dunckel’s solo album, came out in September 2006; Jarvis (Jarvis Cocker, ditto) in November 2006; and Air’s proper fifth album, Pocket Symphony, in March 2007.(*) Listening to them in sequence, one concludes that
1) it does Jarvis no end of good to take a break from himself once in a while,
and
2) Pocket Symphony really did constitute a left turn, because insofar as 5:55 sounds like Air (and it does, very much so; far more than it exhibits audible reverence toward Serge Gainsbourg), the benchmark is still 2004’s Talkie Walkie. With its liquid Moebius-strip piano undercurrent, the lead title track may as well be “Cherry Blossom Girl, Pt.2”. But by 2007, Air had swapped pink petal-filled Kyoto meanderings for a more austere shibumi - and not just because “One Hell of a Party” has Cocker waxing lugubrious over shamisens(**).
Thus, this hidden gem (an iTunes bonus unavailable on CD), reminiscent - probably not intentionally - of peak-hour Scott Walker:
Morning sky stretched tight as a drum
Tension released in an instant
Brocade waistcoat flecked with blood in the golden light
You were dead before you even hit the ground
We’ve travelled from station to station
Now we’ve reached our final destination
Watch all trace of colour draining from your face
Stoop to take my final taste, one final taste of you..(*) The Divine Comedy’s Victory for the Comic Muse was recorded earlier in 2006 and appeared in June, but I have arbitrarily excluded it because it… clearly doesn’t belong to this conceptual sequence, aha. But Neil Hannon did write for both 5:55 and Pocket Symphony, in between doing insert songs for Doctor Who. /completism
(**) Hilariously not unlike Nicolas Roberts, who did the exact same thing on her recent solo album.
I have to admit to fronting here: I don’t in the least remember what I thought of Pocket Symphony at the time. Talkie Walkie was part of my life, and I at least had Opinions(tm) about Love 2; so what happened there? It’s barely conceivable that I didn’t listen to it. Some of the songs are definitely previously-heards: “Napalm Love,” “Photograph”… Maybe I just didn’t like it much: this was the summer before Patrick Wolf and the Libertines happened, and frankly the whole stretch is a frustrating blank.
It’s still inexcusable that I missed this song back when I was listening to “The Operation” on repeat and complaining that Jarvis Cocker wasn’t in the video, though. Someone get Laurent Boutonnat on line 1, ‘cos this is an even better visual.
