Album Review: No Way Down [EP] by Air France

"Evading the structures, waiting to fall but not quite yet" -- so read the liner notes to the second EP from Air France, which arrived a year and a half after their slight but celebrated debut release, On Trade Winds. Partially excerpted from "No Excuses," the EP's most lyrically and rhythmically prominent cut, it's an apt epigraph for the duo's music, which seems to evade conventional structures both compositional and taxonomic, while evoking the sense of openness, endless possibility, and detachment from reality that can come in moments of transition and in-betweenness. Evocation is more or less Air France's primary mode of functioning -- their defining characteristic is how much more difficult (and, seemingly, less relevant) it is to describe what they actually sound like than to list the images they so dreamily conjure up: beach parties, sea foam, airiness, swaying palm trees, endless summer, indescribable bliss.

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