Hot on the heels of their latest single, Freedom, released just two weeks ago, Airport Impressions’ first full-length album, Minutes of a Lifetime, is the culmination of a dream the band have strived towards since they first got together.
Recorded with Howard Keith and released last Friday during a special launch gig at Tattingers, the new album features 12 tracks – 10 of them brand new, along with recent single Walk With Me and an extended version of award-winning 2009 single Borderline, which originally appeared on 2009’s five-track EP Seeing With Eyes Closed.
“Work on the album started just over a year ago,” guitarist Johann Schembri says when I drop by the band’s rehearsal room for a chat about the album.
“We had already started writing the new songs by the time we released the EP and started recording the album last March.”
March is also the month the band released the first single off the album, Walk With Me, which suggests the pace in the studio was relatively swift. Schembri explains the band had done a lot of pre-production work themselves before entering the studio, which helped.
As we wait for band frontman Errol Sammut to arrive, Schembri puts on the album, and the searing guitar intro to opening track David Played Guitar sets the tone for what turns out to be quite an informative look into the spirit and inspiration that produced the music on Minutes of a Lifetime.
David, in case anyone is wondering, could be anyone, but Schembri points out that Sammut wrote the lyrics with him in mind. The song was picked as the opening track because it was the first song the band wrote with bassist Chris Curmi, who is the newest member of the band.
“Chris joined the band before we released the EP, but those songs had already been recorded. The moment we started jamming on what would become DavidPlayed Guitar, we realised he was what Errol, Steve and I were looking for to complete the line-up,” Schembri says.
As the song plays on, Sammut arrives, just in time to confirm that the song was, in fact, written with Schembri in mind.
“It’s about someone who feels more comfortable expressing his emotions through music, through playing guitar. Johann is a lot like that,” says Sammut.
The song has a gradual build-up and isn’t quite as immediate as their single releases usually are. Schembri says he believes it’s a more mature song and that although it requires more than one listen, the band felt it embodied their collective feel for music.
Walk With Me is the next track. The song needs no introduction as it has been a regular mainstay on the local airwaves throughout the summer, thanks largely to its blistering guitar sound and catchy chorus.
The latter is a characteristic Airport Impressions are well known for, but the next track, Perfect Nature, offers a side to the band’s song writing that is emphatically different to their output to date.
Though it is more mellow than their usual material, it is the song’s contemporary Brit-Rock inclination that sets it apart, gently flowing over the brittle guitar intricacy and Sammut’s familiar vocal timbre.
By their own admission, Airport Impressions had for some time been quite taken by a certain Irish band’s singular guitar sound, and while they don’t seek to emulate it, there are references in their music that do point Edge-wards. Their latest single Freedom is a case in point.
“What we want to capture in our songs is the same feeling rather than sound,” Sammut says. “It’s not easy finding entirely unique ways to do it.”
The freedom the song focuses on is to do with freedom of expression more than anything else; an aspect that ties in with the album’s main concept.
“The one thing that really constrains us all is time; that’s why we called the album MinutesofaLifetime, and the cover artwork also reflects the contrast of a serene environment hampered only by several clocks, representing the limitation that time imposes on our lives,” says Sammut.
The album has only a few mellow tracks, among them Spin, a mid paced number featuring mandolin for enhanced effect that, like Perfect Nature (and the still-to-come Elusive and Borderline) stops short of being a ballad, but only just. Sammut explains that the song, which is one of his own, is about learning from one’s past. The album’s title was lifted from this song’s lyrics.
“I feel that too many people dwell on the past and allow it to hold them back. They forget there’s a future ahead of them,” says Sammut.
It is a topic that resurfaces later on FearforLife, another driving rock tune that flaunts the band’s signature melodic sound.
The next track, Wish I Knew, kicks in with a powerful punch akin to the way that Freedom throws itself boldly at the listener.
The band say they are confident this will be the album’s biggest single, and given its guitar-driven build-up and soaring hooks, it’s not difficult to see why.
“It has a very positive vibe and was written during rehearsals,” Schembri says. “The powerful songs usually are; the quieter ones are those we write on our own at home.”
The album also features a track called RetroStar, which Sammut says is Airport Impressions’ attempt at letting go of their serious side and having a bit of fun. “Of course, we enjoy playing all our other songs, but this song is specifically about having fun.”
Another element that sets this song apart is its exuberant drive and proximity to Fables-era REM. It is totally different to the Airport Impressions mould but it’s a change that enhances the album’s energy flow.
Long Way Gone takes the listener back to the band’s serious side. The song was inspired by former Sierra Leone child soldier Ishmael Beah’s biography of the same name.
“I was reading the book and felt inspired by this child’s story,” Schembri says. “This song was actually written quite a while back, but we reworked it and it fits in perfectly with what we’re doing now.”
When it comes to writing songs, Airport Impressions usually do it either as a group during rehearsals, or with Sammut and Schembri writing on their own. Occasionally, however, the two guitarists also collaborate, and TheRabbi’sCall, the last of the new songs on the album, is, in fact, a collaborative effort.
“It wasn’t really planned,” says Sammut. “I called Johann and asked him to come over as we hadn’t written something together in ages.”
Like most songs, it was born of casual jamming, but the end result is quite poignant. “It’s about those Jewish musicians who were in concentration camps, kept alive only to entertain German officers and soldiers,” Schembri explains. “It’s a tribute to fellow musicians and possibly the only ballad on the album.”
And so on to the final track on the album – Borderline– possibly the band’s most popular song to date and a major contributor to the band’s confirmed success.
The version included here is longer than the one on the EP, and its inclusion, I believe, completes the circle that started with the music that marked the beginning of a new chapter in Airport Impressions’ history, rounding it off with the song that propelled the band to the upper end of the local scene, radio charts and awards.
As the title itself suggests, it marks another border that will take Airport Impressions into the next, exciting phase of its career.
“The album has been an exciting journey – from the initial song-writing to the demos and the actual recording, it’s brought out a band feeling in our music that wasn’t completely defined on the EP. It wasn’t easy, but it’s been well worth it,” reflects Schembri.
www.airportimpressions.com
bugeja.michael@gmail.com