Inspirations may include the four confining walls of your bedroom or something sad that happened to you today, like your girlfriend had to work late or you spilled your artisan coffee just after it had cooled down to drinkable temperature levels. With breakthroughs in technology over the past five years, a laptop became the fastest way to gain notoriety and express oneself. That one time you ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the crusts cut off, now you can totally write a song about its symbolic importance as the end of your childhood.
These bedroom recordings have gained popularity with the rise of artists like Youth Lagoon and Perfume Genius whose 2012 album, Put Your Back N 2 It, a silly name for a depressingly serious album, is completely underrated in my opinion. But none of this is to say that Air Review is as talented or interesting as either of those, but they are certainly not as silly as I was making them out to be. The grandiosely titled “America’s Son” is the single from Air Review’s LP Low Wishes, released earlier this year on Velvet Blue Music. A completely measured synth enters and takes quick stabbing breaths, building before pausing, and swelling with jolly piano and lo-fi Nick Drake-ian guitar plucks. The song is airy and pleasant, but lacks the grating contrast of whimsical-ness (like naming your album Put Your Back N 2 It), and a generally melancholic atmosphere that the two aforementioned artists use so well.
I’ve already listed a pretty heavy trio of extremely talented musicians through this summary and probably done a disservice to Air Review in the process. But in their corner, Air Review is a four piece band already far from the bedroom, creating the type of expansive soundscapes and touchingly personal vocals we’ve come to expect from the genre. “America’s Son” is featured on the band’s LP Low Wishes, released earlier this year, that finds them playing pleasant pop music and mingling with a whole mess of other influences that with some cheeky self-awareness, may leave them running right into deserving the label of this proclamatory featured track.
Low Wishes is out now on Velvet Blue Music/Spune and Air Review.
