Imagine Pineapple Thief playing old Porcupine Tree songs with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour guesting on guitar. How can a record like that not earn a five-star rating and be not in your personal top-ten of 2011? Well, that's impossible and so you see that Airbag get the full score and honour for their second effort All Rights Removed. From the first seconds of the opening title track, the big guitar sound directly grabs you. This sound has more than a passing resemblance of that of Gilmour: it's lyrical, soaring, filling the room in all corners with razor sharp solo's... Yes, I'm enjoying this big time. The singing is almost shoe-gazing in a way Gazpacho does, but with more tension in voice and composition. Mixed in with a bit of post-rock instrumental passages and you have a great album which far surpasses the debut Identity (see review). And all this even before we get to the grand finale: the seventeen-minute epic Homesick consisting of three parts which take us deep into the Pink Floyd country. I'm not known for being overly positive, but I am now with Airbag and quite rightly so. Okay, I've got one complaint about this CD: why is it only fifty minutes long and not five hundred? *****André de Waal (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
