Airborne (album)

Airborne
Studio album by Curved Air
Released:	1976-06-18
Recorded:	Spring 1976
Length:	39 minutes
Label(s):	BTM Records, Repertoire Records
Producer(s):	Dennis MacKay, Curved Air
Studio(s):	Trident Studios

Introduction

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Personnel

Band

• Stewart Copeland — drums
• Mick Jacques — guitars
• Sonja Kristina — vocals
• Tony Reeves — bass
• Darryl Way — violin, keyboards

Guest musicians

• Robin Lumley — piano on Broken Lady
• Alan Skidmore — sax on Hot And Bothered
• Henry Lowther — trumpet Hot And Bothered
• Frank Ricotti — congas
• Jack Emblow — accordion on Broken Lady
• Bob Sargeant — organ on Desiree and Kids To Blame

Track listing

1. "Desiree" — 3:12
2. "Kids To Blame" — 3:19
3. "Broken Lady" — 3:13
4. "Juno" — 3:23
5. "Touch Of Tequila" — 3:49
6. "Moonshine" — 11:36
7. "Heaven (Never Seemed So Far Away)" — 3:18
8. "Hot And Bothered" — 2:53
9. "Dazed" — 4:17
10. "Baby Please Don't Go" — 2:31 (bonus track)

Singles released

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Variants, special editions and re-releases

The original LP had 9 tracks, later CD reissues featured the bonus track Baby Please Don't Go, which was the band's last single.

Charts

Album

Year	Chart	Country	Position
YYYY	CHART	COUNTRY	POSITION REACHED

Singles

Year	Song	Chart	Country	Position
YYYY	SONG	CHART	COUNTRY	POSITION REACHED

Awards, nominations, and certifications

Awards

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Year	Winner	Award	Category
YYYY	WINNER (album, song, producer, etc.)	AWARD (Grammy, People's Choice, etc.)	CATEGORY

Nominations

This section needs more information.

Year	Nominee	Award	Category
YYYY	NOMINEE (album, song, producer, etc.)	AWARD (Grammy, People's Choice, etc.)	CATEGORY

Certifications

This section needs more information.

Country	Certifier	Classification	Certification
COUNTRY	CERTIFIER (RIAA, IFPI...)	CLASSIFICATION (Album, singles, foreign artist...)	CERTIFICATION (Gold, Platinum, Diamond...)

Quotations and trivia

This section needs more information.

See also

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External links and reviews

Phil Sutcliffe's album review was printed in SOUNDS on July 10, 1976. This copyrighted piece of writing is presented here, but is not to be used elsewhere without the author's permission.

Sonja's gang get Soundsman hot and bothered

CURVED AIR: 'Airborne' (BTM 1008) ****

CURVED AIR have never made a bad album and they aren't about to start now, though that isn't to say they're predictable. In their time they have ranged from fey and pretty pieces about elfin boys to the rough and sleaze of urban Back Street Luv. Their last, 'Midnight Wire', was musically unusually smooth and laid back under the restraining influence of star American producers while most of the lyrics were passionately direct in telling it how it is through they eyes of a woman, an absurdly rare point of view in rock. And 'Airborne' doesn't sound much like anything that went before.

The Sonja Kristina / Norma Tager collaboration which produced the women's songs has run its course mainly for contractual reasons and the composing credits here are a patchwork of every member of the band plus a couple of outsiders. that could be one explanation for what I feel initially as a partial loss of identity - but then when a band refuses to stand still isn't that going to be the first impression every time they make a record? Maybe. Anyway let me lay the foremost goodies on you first, 'Broken Lady' and 'Hot And Bothered'.

Darryl Way's violin and Jack Emblow's accordion (you remember him fron 'Sing Something Simple' of course) move you into 'Broken Lady' gently and with the sweet surprise of finding such an unlikely blend of instruments sounding so beautiful. Then Sonja, on-stage tiger-lilly, melts into one of her most delicate and sensitive vocals on her own lyric, neatly phrased to cover herself, specific references to Edith Piaf ('the sparrow') and every other lady who ever got broken by life. It's lovely, the sort of track which has always made Curved Air essential. No other band produces that contrasting and joining of toughness and fragility which might be summed up as images of masculinity and femininity but isn't that simple or absolute (Sonja often plays the street brawler offset by the lyricism of Darryl's violin).

'Hot And Bothered' is the peak of the latest Curved Air styling. A quantity of cool with hard rock energy from Mick Jacques' guitar, Tony Reeves' bass and Stewart Copeland's drums bursting through so that they're almost a heavy band (and even more so live at the moment). Mick launches this one with a riff flexing like a springboard, Sonja puts across a steamy lyric like a bitch on heat and then they take another surprising route with a jazzy sax solo from Alan Skidmore pursued in perfect rapport by Darryl's violin. Rock'n'roll and musicianly too.

Other special pleasures are the single 'Desiree', a summery cruiser with a touch of tension and surging slide guitar from Mick, and 'Dazed', a Way composition which hints bizarrely at being a cabaret song while rataining a certain spaciness and finally expressing agonised confusion within a superficially smooth structure. 'Heaven' probably has the simplest appeal with a fascinating chord descent, and there are no bum tracks at all though 'Touch Of Tequila' is a bit banal as well as nicely singalongable and the extended track 'Moonshine' could have done with a little more editing (for instance I don't think the guitar passage works). But 'Moonshine' is already taking new shapes live and it's good to see Air going for a long piece again remembering that in 'Metamorphosis' on 'Air Cut' they have already put down one of the most substantial rock probes towards classical-length composition.

I'll love them till the cows come home.

PHIL SUTCLIFFE

References

• CD liner notes
• "Airborne." Curved Air Home Page. 15 Jan. 2004. 8 Apr. 2008. <http://www.curvedair.com/1976.htm>