Air Talkie Walkie (Source/Astralwerks)

Like so many other pop wizards, Air take their favorite David Bowie disguise and build a whole new sound out of it. The French electronica duo always sounds as if it's lost in erotic space, floating in the blue with Major Tom, combining the soppy balladry of Hunky Dory with the whooshing electronic haze of Low. Air's music is charged up with regret and longing -- too much for the Earth to satisfy -- and so they take off into the ozone. Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoit "JB" Dunckel are blessed with a light touch, a playful spirit and a gaudy sense of melancholy. Back in 1998, when everyone was still flogging the dead drum-and-bass horse, Air's debut, Moon Safari, drew on Brian Wilson, Serge Gainsbourg, Francis Lai and other Sixties nut-case visionaries, mixing up cocktail-lounge beats, lush Seventies keyboards, strings, horns and sad piano. In "Ce Matin La," they even made a tuba solo sound cool.

Air stumbled with their follow-up, 2001's harsh, humorless 10,000 Hz Legend. But on their excellent new Talkie Walkie, Air return to what they do best: elegantly moody soundtrack music for imaginary films. Indeed, the closing instrumental, "Alone in Kyoto," has already made a memorable appearance in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Talkie Walkie is basically the musical equivalent of Lost in Translation -- it's a slow-motion romance where nothing much happens, but even the quiet moments here can send out emotional ripples that seem to go on forever.

Talkie Walkie is rich, somber headphone pop, and Air sound more than ever like two lonely spaceboys out on their own. Surprisingly, Air worked with a real rock producer this time. Nigel Godrich, the man behind Radiohead's OK Computer and Beck's Mutations, helps build the spacious grandeur of the music. "Run" blends horror-movie organ with glitch techno, and "Biological" weaves an electric-guitar riff through whizzing synth effects and video-game noises. In the fabulous Ziggy Stardust-style slow jam "Another Day," Dunckel sings about how falling out of love feels like drifting alone in space.

The piece de resistance, though, is "Alpha Beta Gaga," which takes the happiest melody Air have ever composed and warps it with a cheerfully whistled chorus that sounds right at home in an alien musical environment full of bright pizzicato strings, theremin and even a banjo. It's an artificial paradise that allows the strangest emotions to flourish together. In peak moments such as "Alpha Beta Gaga," Talkie Walkie sounds utterly unearthly but full of human feeling and wit. Listening to this album is like being married to Britney Spears -- it's beautiful, it's magical, it's disorienting, and it's over in an hour. (ROB SHEFFIELD)

Starsailor Silence Is Easy (Capitol)

Starsailor are the most tuneful and direct of all the current British bands, young romantics who operate without a hint of artiness. Too often, their second album sounds like Coldplay covering Barry Manilow -- melancholy pop rock admirable for its swooning beauty but plagued by generic heartache. On "White Dove," singer James Walsh channels Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley while acoustic guitar and strings make nice; "Four to the Floor" uses the same strings for a schlocky disco groove. "It's for the good of you I sing sweet melody," Walsh croons on "Born Again." Prettiness comes easy to young Brit poppers; the hard part is finding something to say. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Fantomas Delirium Cordia (Ipecac)

The first track on Fantomas' new album is its best. It's also the only song on the CD: a sprawling seventy-four-minute epic incorporating noise rock, free-form jazz, chamber music, klezmer and spooky piano lines straight out of a Halloween movie. On one hand, it's maddening, especially when the band lapses into twenty-two minutes of near silence. But Cordia demands repeated listens, if only to hear the freakish wonder that is Mike Patton's voice: The former Faith No More frontman's well-placed moans, gasps and shrieks keep the noise together and give the music a creepy, alien vibe. Not recommended for mix CDs. (KIRK MILLER)

Stereolab Margerine Eclipse (Elektra)

More of the same Marxist pop songs, only not as catchy maybe we should be glad that Stereolab are in a holding pattern. The group lost a singer and guitarist when Mary Hansen died in a bicycle accident on December 9th, 2002. But the new Stereolab album, Margerine Eclipse, is neither a reminiscence nor a reinvention -- it's more of the same, with gurgling synthesizers, leisurely tempos and "ba-da-ba" backing vocals. So how come there's almost nothing to hum? Stereolab once had a knack for making odd sounds go pop -- that was the not-so-secret message behind "John Cage Bubblegum." And yet this album is full of familiar noises and aimless melodies; even Laetitia Sadier's crooned slogans ("People oppressed, liberties crushed") sound a bit stale. "Margerine Melodie" has a meticulous microhouse groove, and "Bop Scotch" is an appealing example of Stereolab in rock mode, but still: Is it unfair to ask this group to do more than simply keep going? (KELEFA SANNEH)

The Flatlanders Wheels of Fortune (New West)

Just one year after their stunning three-decades-in-the-making comeback album, Now Again, the Lubbock, Texas, supergroup -- Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock -- is still riding high. Wheels of Fortune isn't quite as cohesive as Now, but the group's trad-country is crisp and decorous. The vocal tether on the album is Gilmore, whose finely modulated twang enriches the sweet songwriting on "Once Followed by the Wind" and the blissfully melancholy "I Keep Wishin' for You." (JON CARAMANICA)

Elbow Cast of Thousands (V2)

Elbow are part of the new school of English bands who are better at arranging lush, astral sounds than they are at writing actual songs. Cast of Thousands, their second album, is a rock-symphonic cocktail of ringing guitars, jazzy pitter-patter and interstellar sound effects, with a London gospel choir chiming in on the luxuriously pretty "Grace Under Pressure." Guy Garvey's mellow croon and stream-of-consciousness poetry about sad-eyed girls and shitty friends fits the music's romantic, free-flowing vibe. It's easy to come off dumb while trying to sound this smart, but Cast of Thousands is the rare art-rock album that comes as much from the heart as the head. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Mindy Smith One Moment More (Vanguard)

Mindy Smith's debut opens with an Appalachian-haunted, spiritual rocker, "Come to Jesus." The unlisted album closer is Dolly Parton's moving "Jolene," in which a woman begs the town hottie to leave her man alone, featuring harmony vocals from Parton herself that heighten the song's gorgeous desperation (Smith's version of "Jolene" also opens the recently released Parton tribute, Just Because I'm a Woman). These bookending tracks stand in contrast to the rest of the album, a set of delicately arranged folk pop in which bits of steel guitar and piano wind their way like vines around Smith's songbird trilling. Earnest and girlishly powerful, Smith's singing and songs (she wrote everything here except for the Parton cover) will appeal to fans of Alison Krauss and Patty Griffin. Listen a little closer for fine axwork by guest guitarists Kenny Vaughn (Lucinda Williams) and Will Kimbrough (Kim Richey). (MEREDITH OCHS)

Weird War If You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em (Drag City)

If You Can't . . . recalls Sly Stone's classic albums Life and Stand!: The tunes are similarly built on acid rock guitars, rumbling echo-y vocals over bubbly bass throb. But If You Can't . . . is a strange hybrid born of skewed personalities not dogmatic interpretation of idealized music past. Ian Svenonius has never bothered to become a proper singer, but he's an expert whisperer on politicized funk of "AK-47." "Tess," Weird War's take on psychedelic folk, finds him almost cooing against warbling bass and bongos like a wicked Donovan. Guitarist Alex Minoff riffs nastily on tunes such as "Grand Fraud," dolloping on sitar effects. His fuzz freak-outs and space jamming ("One By One") make for stoner rock snack food. With bassist Michelle Mae's fundamental grooves and Svenonius' extended metaphors, Minoff takes Weird War far from garage. (JOHN DUGAN)

Meat Beat Manifesto . . . In Dub (:/run/Lakeshore)

Since 1987, Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers has engaged in acid-etched cut-n-paste clatter. . . . In Dub works the same way, as tracks emerge less as remixes than as sequels to 2002's R.U.O.K.?. Using sparse source material from cuts including "Spinning Round," "Supersoul," "No Echo in Space" and "Retrograde," Dangers reconfigures dense, yet coherent, mixes. Viscous bass remnants are identifiable and occasional snippets remain intact, but additional accoutrements cycle and resonate. Over five tracks, DJ Collage peppers nodding arrangements with dancehall toasting. Somewhat uniform in its bulbous groove, . . . In Dub still reaffirms Dangers' roots while exhibiting his modernized means. (TONY WARE)

Ghost Hypnotic Underworld (Drag City)

What a concept: six pensive multi-instrumentalists fusing Pink Floyd psychedelics with traditional-minded Japanese music and dishing it up for the indie-rock denizens. Sixteen years young, Ghost have forged a cult following through collaborations with slowcore duo Damon and Naomi and intermittent releases of the epic kind. Their latest is no exception. Well over an hour, it finds kinetic studio wizardry colliding with dripping water and claps of thunder -- a classic case of man-meets-nature. The ethereal opening cut -- part of the four-stage, improvisational title track -- is a thirteen-minute, cavernous wash that lends credence to the collective's apt moniker. That proves to be just a warm-up, though, for what follows is a barrage of electric guitar, piano, lute, harp, tabla and theremin that is alternately a sublime blend and cacophonous concoction. It's the sound of a haunting underworld cracking wide open, and a battery of angels and demons being unleashed onto the lands. (KURT ORZECK)

(January 26, 2004)