Review
Airs
Rainclouds Over The Remains Of Hope

Have you ever listened to the record at the wrong time and have it just put you off on that record even though your reaction was not the record’s fault? Well, good for you if this never happens to you; but this scenario does occur to me from time to time, and, unfortunately, it can put my potential enjoyment of a record back a bit to where listening to such a record is not an option for a while. Often, if I force myself to listen to a record like this, I am overly critical of everything about the record from recording quality to the actual music (which is mean and completely unnecessary… sometimes I call this a “reviewer’s tantrum”); and I actually may develop a deep seeded hate for records that garner such ire.

Rainclouds Over The Remains Of Hope avoided that whole bag of worms somehow and defied that whole logic by somehow hitting on a “quirky” feeling as it played, and describing what quirky is or how this record is quirky will probably be impossible on paper or the computer screen (unless I took some pictures of the gesticulations that I use to describe quirky or maybe think of Ray Liotta in the famous Goodfellas scene where he tells Joe Pesci’s character, Tommy, that he’s funny because that’s how I imagine myself looking as I type this). Jamming out shoegaze influenced tunes with the occasional black metal drum flourish, Airs reminds me a great deal of those bands that drench their recordings in reverb but while still not completely taking themselves seriously as “Joyless” shows a genuine sense of wistfulness those bands seem to lack; and the record is all the better for these “fun” moments that pop up preventing listeners from being dragged into some melancholy abyss (one does get tired of the milieu of such morose ponderings on record).

Airs certainly might have the market cornered or at least might be a forerunner of a new underground pop movement; such prognostications or declarations will have to be born out to see if it is only hyperbole, but if the songs like the title track (even though it is a bit on the longer side and a bit mellow at times but those make the song so good), “Joyless”, and “Innocence” played on the radio, I might have to rethink my avoiding of the terrestrial airwaves over again. Even though people might think I was strange, this record feels like a pick me up on an otherwise dreary day; yes, that title certainly would suggest that such things are impossible, but I do not care. Grab Rainclouds Over The Remains Of Hope from Music Ruins Lives before it is too late and you miss the boat because it will probably be one of those records (you know the ones that you wished you had but missed because you were buying a hot dog or some other worthless thing instead).