Starting out as a singer/writer duo in 1975 Graham Russell (Nottingham) and Russell Hitchcock (Melbourne) have been doing their AIR SUPPLY thing for the last 30 years, with varying line-ups and levels of success. Homer Simpson dismissed them as wuss rock and America's Saturday Night Live parodied them as gay fame fantasists. In general they have Cliff Richard credentials.
So they don't really need a Peel Disciple's nerdy abuse for not being the Butthole Surfers. They are the heart and brains of AIR SUPPLY's steady album and tour output and they're still making a living out of playing music. If you heard "I'm All Out Of Love" right now you'd immediately know who I'm talking about. There are only so many songs that have such instant recognition throughout the world. And they are the same age as me.
I assume here that I'm writing to people who didn't live through the 70s and 80s. Like all decades they spawned great music, while, as ever, the less great music sold units. The choice has always been there, and the Russell/Hitchcock partnership have made good money from sweet songs that touched romantic yearnings in lots of gentle good people.
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This acoustic CD does a very good job of recalling the melodies and the romantic spirit without any recourse to overblown arrangements or production pomposity. An album of such quality by a couple of unknown outsiders would get a serious buzz of interest I'd guess. Richard Hawley's doing OK, for one. Maybe with slightly better songs, but the pitch isn't madly different.
There's a DVD in the package too, with four more live songs and various archive and being in the studio stuff. So if Air Supply were a soppy month in your teenage years, this would be a much better bet than trying to restore your vinyl copy of the 1980 "Lost in Love" album. Two voices and a couple of guitars are just as romantic. The heart is still on the sleeve and the choices are just a straightforward. With you, without you. In love, out of love.
They were simpler days eh? And we have Coldplay now.
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