It's Nighttime

If it were all based on album covers, Moon Safari would surely win. Sure, there's something a little too 70's going on the fronts of both these CDs. But at least the guy up front on Air's CD art could easily be modeled on those action figures that I know Andrew and Jeff lost in their house's shag carpet when they were little and not on those menacing disco dancers who sheath themselves in radioactive pants that shoot lightning from the crotchal region, as is the case with Midnite Vultures.

It's supposed to be about the music, though. So: each of these albums has some lovely instrumentation. Air know how to deploy trumpet music at precisely the right instants, and that Beck can pull in the most countrified banjo riff at the end of "Sexx Laws" proves, I think, that at his best, the guy has a knack for the finest kind of incongruity.

That said, there's a few songs that strike me as tired on each of these albums.

Beck's "Hollywood Freaks," for instance, takes a critical stance that should be wry or incredulous or pointed but isn't; it's just conventional judgment gussied up in hip clothing. For my money, "Peaches and Cream," too, lacks invention, as do a number of the weird biblical resonances on this album, which stop short of iconoclasm, it seems, not out of reverence but because they don't know any better and lack verve. Then again, "Get Real Paid" and "Nicotine and Gravy" have enough groove and electricity that they could almost reconcile me to Midnite Vulture's album art.

As for Air, let's admit that "Sexy Boy" is easy fodder for high school movies for a reason. By and large, though, where Moon Safari sounds overplayed, it's mostly because it is played often, which speaks more to the album's quality than to any weakness for cliche on its part. And I can imagine myself overindulging in "Kelly Watch" and "You Make it Easy" especially.

Short version: Moon Safari beats Midnite Vultures.