Air Miami — Me. Me. Me. (Deluxe Edition)
Qobuz reissue review (July 2023)
This deluxe edition reissue of the only studio album by Air Miami — formed by Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross immediately after the breakup of their previous band, Unrest — is a pleasant surprise. Namely because, upon its original 1995 release, the profoundly wonderful Me, Me, Me was a largely unheralded work that doesn’t seem to have undergone any sort of widespread critical re-evaluation since then. What’s even more unexpected is that this Me, Me, Me sneakily subverts both the original release and the widely accepted reissue format by inserting its three bonus tracks throughout the album’s sequence, rather than appending them to the end. “Warm Miami May,” “Pucker,” and “See-Through Plastic” had all been previously released as singles or compilation cuts, but here, they seamlessly fit into the album flow. (Of course, sardonic subversion and “music-as-art-object” was always the M.O. of Mark Robinson, whether in this band or Unrest, or as the founder of Teen Beat Records.) The bonus tracks don’t substantively alter the album’s texture or dynamics, but their presence does give the vision the band had for Me, Me, Me a little more clarity. Recorded less than a year after Unrest’s last show, comparisons to that band are inevitable. However, Air Miami’s songs are more direct and less self-consciously “artsy,” while still retaining the beauty of Unrest’s later work. Being free from the struggles that led to Unrest’s demise — mainly the financial pressures felt as an “established indie rock band” during the early ’90s alt-rock boom years — allowed Air Miami to be a more finely calibrated pop band. The material is honed to a jewel-tone brightness, but breathes with a sense of easy optimism, whether it’s Robinson careening through the power-pop madness of “I Hate Milk” and the open-chord dreaminess of “Dolphin Expressway” or Cross breathily crooning on cuts like “Seabird.”
