For years, Americans have been transfixed by the latest imports from across the pond. Such was the case with the band Air Traffic, which opened for Elbow at the Bluebird Theater on Friday night.
Having never heard of the band prior to the show, I was naturally a bit skeptical about its sound. Its initial look: a handful of young, semi-trendy Brits, forced me to connect them with the host of terrible emo bands that have come to flood the music world these days.
But, Air Traffic proved to be a classic case of “don’t judge a book by its cover.” This unassuming looking foursome knows how to rock, and rock hard.
The band commanded its set with the natural confidence of a well-seasoned band despite playing to a nearly packed house of 30-something Elbow devotees as the opening act.
Channeling a variety of genres and influences, each song was entrancingly unique and fresh without seeming disjointed or manufactured.
The range of the set served as a testimony to each musician’s masterful skill and talent. The result was a sound destined for stadiums and arenas in the future. Overall, Air Traffic’s undeniable on-stage charisma and versatile sound won even the most stoic audience members over by the time they exited. Air Traffic is another gift to Americans from the U.K. that ranks right up there with fish and chips.
Pick up their debut album Fracture Life; it will at least tide you over until they come through town again this fall.
Air Traffic members David Ryan Jordan (percussion) and Chris Wall (vocals/keyboards) took some time to sit down with me before Friday’s show to answer a few questions about hitting the big-time in London, coming to America and their newest material.
Q: I heard that the tour in London ended with a sold-out, big bang performance. What was so outstanding about that show?
DJ: It was our biggest headlining show to date and it was kind of the end of our album campaign in the U.K. as well. We have been touring the album there for the last year and a half, and we’re really just starting out here. It is quite good to just have an amazing show.
CW: And the people were just so into it. It was just amazing.
Q: Did you take any time off or just come straight here to conquer the U.S.?
CW: Yeah, we only had time for a couple of drinks really after the show in London and then we came straight to the airport, slept there and then got the flight here the next day.
Q: Are you guys working on new material while you are doing all of this touring?
CW: Yeah, we are. We did some demo-ish stuff before the U.K. tour, and I guess we’ll get a guitar while we’re here and write a bit on the bus.
DJ: We won’t be recording it until after the summer though. We kind of want to focus on America now for a long time first and we’re coming back again in September as well.
Q: Do you guys like America?
CW: Yeah, yeah. We haven’t really seen a lot of it yet, but what we’ve seen is great.
Q: Who does most of the song writing? Is it a group effort?
CW: It is kind of open play to whoever wants to suggest starting points. It tends to be me and David coming up with most of the starting stuff, and then we either play to each other and expand on it or bring ideas to the whole band sessions and kind of just play it over and over and work on structure more that way.
DJ: But we try to change it. Recently we’ve sort of come up with this concept of just coming up with an idea and then just going into the studio and recording it and then everyone comes back into the room and goes “where can we go from here?” Then, we go back in and someone will put down another idea and it will be like building songs up like that. That’s a different way of working for us and its kind of, well, it’s done all right actually. We’ve gotten some good results out of it. We haven’t really gotten any particular style of writing, it’s anything really.
Q: Do you think that you will road-test any new songs towards the end of this tour?
CW: Yeah, I think so, yeah. I hope we’ve got some good long times to sound check because that’s when we get to try stuff out, like unwritten songs, we can finish them and stuff. We do have stuff that we have written that we will probably try out on the U.S. audiences.
DJ: I’m not really sure how much new stuff we’ll be doing on these tour dates with Elbow because we have a shorter set because we are supporting. So we might just play it safe and play album tracks, but after we finish this tour we’ll be doing our own headline tour which will be longer so we will be trying some new stuff on them.
