Blanket statement: I don't like realism. Or, to be more specific, I hate the haggard notion that art must always strive for so-called truth. Often, the best literature, film, and music has little or no grounding in actuality, instead constructing elaborate, fantastical worlds that may or may not have some loose allegorical underpinning. Tolkien insisted that Lord of the Rings wasn't about World War II or the Nuclear Age, and I believe him. The Coen Brothers are brilliant precisely because their films are set in vacuous parallel worlds, which, thanks to their freedom from all things real and current, are usually better developed and more palpable than movies that attempt to be relevant. But music, because of its tendency towards abstraction, is perhaps best equipped for escapism. Some of my favorite albums in recent memory used exotic instruments, indecipherable lyrics, and amorphous structures to create a sublime aura of the unreal. If Up in Flames is secretly about politics, I don't want to know.
That said, electronics play a somewhat ambivalent role in music: They can either bend reality beyond recognition, or relentlessly exaggerate it. On!Air!Library!'s self-titled debut LP uses synthesizers and other digital affectations largely to the former extent. While the nine songs follow a highly conventional format and feature a bankable triptych of guitar, bass, and drums, the record is engrossing and unique despite its obvious limitations.
Finding myself thoroughly absorbed by this album after only a few listens, I was somewhat confused when I noticed that the brooding ballad "Fell to Earth" uses sound effects from AOL Instant Messenger. I'd previously written it off as obnoxious background noise from my perennially malfunctioning laptop, but at that moment, administering the crucial headphone test, I couldn't help feeling betrayed. What had until then provided a pleasant 40-minute vacation from essay writing and general neurosis had been encroached upon the harshest of all realities: a reminder of one's inescapable life as a loser. For objectivity's sake, it was the only-- and thus best-- employment of AIM's ubiquitous, creaking digital door that I've heard in indie music. But it nevertheless dampened my enthusiasm, if only nominally, for this svelte pop record.
A brief biography of the band at the Arena Rock Recording Company website makes the bold proclamation that "On!Air!Library! looks not to the past but the future." This may be true, but On!Air!Library! are then subconsciously well-steeped in a vibrant history of forebears. "Bread", with its slack, reverb-laden guitars and lazily unfurling lyrics, drips yolky remnants of Galaxie 500 and My Bloody Valentine, while "Feb." packages a panoply of post-punk and new-wave bands via their Interpol incarnation. (Interpol drummer Sam Fogarino even cameos with angular percussion on the opener, "Faltered Ego".) Other songs regurgitate their reference points in sufficiently abridged form. "User 28" effortlessly slithers through several different guises before fulminating with impassioned vocals and an insurgent drumbeat. The song germinates in a pool of nebulous drones, and then evolves into a loose structure with twangy guitars and a Bill Laswell-inflected bassline, before finally erupting at around the 2\xBD-minute mark. It's easily the zenith of this compact but wonderfully rich album.
Sticklers might disparage Alley and Claudia Deheza's vocals for being tonally off somewhat, but compared with another celebrated pair of vocal sisters I recently reviewed for this site (CocoRosie), their style is vastly more honest and engaging. While alternating between derivative and rudimentary, On!Air!Library! is nevertheless well executed in its obviousness. My critiques are mostly caviling, and purposely mentioned lastly, as something of an afterthought; this album's merits far overshadow its occasional moments of banality. It's a billowy pop blanket in which to curl up and forget everything that isn't as sweet. If On!Air!Library! strive for truth and gritty realism, they've captured something from a distant future where, all told, things don't look so bad.
