Airport Girl, Slow Light

reviewed by dave heaton

The fourth song on Airport Girl’s second album Slow Light is titled “Ode to the City”, with the image of “slow light across these streets” that gives the album its title. Even before I get to that point, though, something about the mood of the album already has me thinking about cities. It’s that dreamlike, bittersweet feeling – when you feel like time is standing still, but only for a moment, and it’s both beautiful and strange. It’s a similar tone to that of my two all-time favorite city atmosphere albums – The Blue Nile’s Hats and Luna’s Chinatown -- even though musically Slow Light comes from quite a different place.

That place is the sensitive pop songwriting of singer/guitarist Rob Price, layered with instruments – melodica, piano, percussion, strings, trumpet, bass, and more – courtesy of the other five band members, plus three more for this record. The end result is a lonesome country style hanging over classic indie-pop. It’s gorgeous, filled with longing: sad but also hopeful. And there’s an unmistakable mood, present whether they’re playing gentle ballads or letting the guitars cry out (as on the perfect closing number, “Bullfighting”, which actually does remind me musically of that Luna album).

”She is an elusive mystery to me / she slips away like mercury,” Price sings on the lovely “Show Me the Way”, one of several songs built around questions about which way a relationship, or potential one, will go. That slipping-away feeling seems key to this album, to me. It’s part of that city mood I was talking about, a glow and sense of escaping time that really doesn’t have much to do with cities after all. But this is only part of the story; as with a city, there’s always something interesting lurking around the corner.

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