Best Record of 2001: Day 26
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a look at Air’s 10000 hz Legend as it faces off against Tenacious D’s self-titled debut.
Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challengeand noted that I’d be writing some of these up.
The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts along the way, so make sure to stay tuned for those!
Check ’em out and let me know your thoughts! Chin wags & hot takes welcome! Sharing and restacks always appreciated.
KA—
I don’t know Air enough to know if they’re particularly ambitious, so for ease of context, I’m going to assume that the success of tracks like “Sexy Boy” was a happy accident. Accidental or not, it also put them at the head of the chill-out table. It’s a Rosetta Stone for a ton of your fave retro-future bands. They could’ve ridden that wave for a few more records or two—I’m going off fuzzy memory here, and frankly, it’s too early to look—but by most accounts, Moon Safari was highly regarded and still shows up at the top of most people’s “Air records ranked” lists.
It was all very much in the realm of music-for-heads type stuff or what you might hear at the after-after party. And that was fine! No one could’ve blamed them for milking that for all it was worth.
Instead, they went the other way and built what, to my ear, is a decidedly less commercial sound (and decidedly more… I dunno… weird?). By and large, it works fine. Beck’s here, and it’s a perfectly serviceable collab. I prefer his partnership with The Chemical Brothers more, but that’s a story for another day.
The voice on “How Does It Make You Feel” made the hair on my arms stand up. I’m one of those people who find ASMR irritating, and these weird-ass whisper vocals are having the same effects. Fellow misophonia sufferers, feel free to skip this one.
And it just goes on like this: a great song here, a dud there. One of the knocks on this record is its inconsistency, and after sitting with it for a little bit, I wonder if that was by design. Did they do it to throw fair-weather fans (and critics) off, or were they trying to make each song its own little universe?
I suppose the vibe they were going for is “relaxed” (aka chill), but really it’s just dreary. There’s an art to picking the right music for the after party (and of course making it in the first place).
I can appreciate how much of a gamble Air took making this record—it’s good to take an artistic risk now and again. I can also get behind the idea that following up Moon Safari was never going to be easy, no matter what direction they took. It’s an easy record for listeners to like, and perhaps they saw that simply stamping copies of that out would be nice for their bank accounts but taxing on their creative spirit.
It’s easy to risk it all when you’ve got nothing to lose, right? But others have done it before and done it better. 10,000 Hz Legend hits the bullseye in some spots and doesn’t even hit the target in others. I can’t tell if they aimed for the fences or just said “F it” and mailed this one in.
Either way, I hope they were sincere in that effort, which is more than I can say about Tenacious D. Oh hey, satire-as-homage-as-pastiche. Fun! (eye roll). Jack Black is best served in limited doses… like, really limited. At any rate, the whole thing is presented as some sort of high-level joke only the in-crowd can truly appreciate. But as I found myself looking for literally any excuse to slog through this album, it became pretty clear that I’m not the target demographic.
I know a lot of people think this sort of thing is manna from heaven, but I find it all incredibly tedious. Life’s too short for this sort of thing!
Bottom Line: Not thrilled to pull the lever for either of these, but on balance, it’s gotta be Air. If they go through to round 2, it’ll be a short-lived victory as they’ll go onto face Bjork’s Vespertine.
Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my takes? Which one of these would you vote for? Sound off in the comments!
Kevin Sent 