Airbag - "The Century of the Self"
Completely uncommitted on every front
Airbag have been one of my favored, go-to Prog Rock acts for about six years or so now. I discovered All Rights Reserved, their second album, in the initial exploratory push in 2018 which, ultimately, became this album review project that has since evolved into Versatone. They did, at that point, have four albums out, which I have spent plenty of time with over the years. Their fifth album, 2020’s A Day at the Beach, blew my mind in realtime when it released, and the hype I’ve had for the band only grew.1
Naturally, then, I’ve been extremely excited about The Century of the Self, their sixth LP, expecting it to easily lodge itself within my top 20 for the year, at minimum.
Airbag is very pointedly a descendant of Pink Floyd. They’re arguably closely related to fellow Prog Rock titans Porcupine Tree (and, by default, Steven Wilson), but Wilson has trouble sitting still, as it were; where Wilson has to branch out in other directions, Airbag have seemed very intent on delving deeper in the direction of Floyd and beyond.
On The Century of the Self, Airbag have attempted to move further away from the dense electronic elements which made A Day at the Beach so deliciously lush, stating that they didn’t feel that sound fit the material, despite that Century started out as a follow-up to that successful last outing.
That isn’t to say that the deep electronic instrumentation is totally gone. A couple of the album’s five tracks bring in some of those elements for atmosphere and depth, such as “Awakening”. But even when they’re present, they’re much more watered down — the compositions are generally a lot more basic and repetitive. Album opener “Dysphoria” is probably the worst offender in this category.
I’ve heard some label Prog Rock as ‘boring’, and I’ve always defended it. Prog has always been inherently interesting to me because you can never truly predict what’s coming.
“Dysphoria” is one of the dullest songs I’ve heard in a long time. It’s bare-bones and monotonous and ten minutes long. It spikes for the choruses and a solo, but that’s it. That’s all. What makes it worse is that the album is bookended by a pair of long songs which never really go anywhere. Closer “Tear It Down” has a little more meat to it…but not much; the barrenness of both songs can truly be felt in how much the drums dominate both tracks, with long stretches of the instruments doing fuck all and the percussion just holding time.
“Tear It Down” has several moments where it gets my hopes up, too — the introductory drums are strongly reminiscent of the intro to “Sunsets”, just a bit pared down, and I get disappointed every time it plays and the bass doesn’t come in running.
The middle three tracks here are the best on offer, but even they are mid, at best, for Airbag standards. And the album, conceptually and thematically, reeks of fundamental fear-mongered misunderstandings of “woke” and the moral expectations of modern society, with the album calling out “cancel culture” with its whole chest but doing it entirely through vagueries. There’s no commitment, no indictment. There’s no point in creating art if you aren’t going to speak your mind through it.
As my grandfather used to say, “don’t pussyfoot around”. At least right-wingers will speak their mind and let us know where they stand.
Tonally, it just makes them sound old,2 and I’ll toss this one on the pile with Riverside’s I.D. Entity — but at least that one was compelling, musically. I’m really just disappointed.
Rating: Orange
The band’s guitarist, Bjorn Riis, also has three solo albums, and they’re all stellar, as well.
And, really, doesn’t the album’s title just say it all: “Kids these days! So selfish! Get off my lawn!”