Airport 5: Life Starts Here

Airport 5: Life Starts Here

2002

Fading Captain Series

Track Listing: 1. Intro  2. We're in the Business  3. Yellow Wife No. 5  4. Wrong Drama Addiction(...and Life Starts Here)  5. However Young They Are  6. The Dawntrust Guarantee  7. Forever Since  8. Impressions of a Leg   9. How Brown?  10. Natives Approach our Plane  11. I Can't Freeze  12. Out in the World 

This one is possibly as weird as "Tower in the Fountain of Sparks," but comes off as less so because it's so consistently strange. The previous album had a couple of obvious pop songs that threw the flow of the album off, but it was hard to complain because the pop songs were so damn good...

Pretty much no pop tunes here, but that's not to say this isn't memorable. There are bizarre chants in the form of "Native Approach Our Plane" and "Wrong Drama Addiction," and a fistful of bleary slow tunes, the best of which "How Brown?" is oddly stirring when Robert Pollard earnestly sings "And we must be adventurers! Partners in Shit-heeled Glory!" How those lyrics can come across as touching, I'll never know, but take my word for it, they are. I also love the moment on "Out in the World" when those mighty power chords crash in and Pollard belts out "Move onto it! Unshakable! It's a cinch!" Just a fine, fine moment.

My only real complaint would be the 3 minutes of  droning noise at the end of the fourth track. It sounds like a refrigerator humming and kills any momentum the record had built up to that point. Otherwise, "Wrong Drama Addiction (...and Life Starts Here)" is a cool suspenseful song, where Bob delivers a riveting vocal.

This is the last Airport 5 record to date, and they go out with a pretty solid outing  It is hard to believe Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout worked on a record together that isn't brimming  with  killer hooks, but I don't think that was the point of Airport 5. I think they were mining for something deeper and darker here...Again, recommended for fans of Pollard's more esoteric work, who should definitely get a kick out of this...

And let's check out "Yellow Wife No. 5"