Both
in terms of personal success and chart positioning, 2008's

Flying
Colours

was a crowning achievement for the careers of Tarik
Ejjamai, Jonathan Notley and Max McKinnon – better known
collectively as

Bliss N Eso

. The trio had shown great potential with
their previous records, but it was with

Flying Colours

that
they made good on the promise shown. Not since

Hilltop Hoods

'


The Calling

in 2003 had such a world-class hip-hop record been
a proudly Australian product. With this taken into consideration, you
could forgive the group for being unsure of the direction to take
leading up to their fourth studio album,

Running On Air

. That
said, it's one thing for uncertainty in the build-up to following a
record like

Colours

, but it's another thing entirely for that
uncertainty to carry on throughout the recording and subsequent
release.

It's
not the lack of ideas that are present and accounted for on the
record, but more the execution - or lack thereof - that lets it
down. Truly great tracks never last a streak longer than two tracks,
and the album’s flow of songs strictly disallows a clean break
between the mostly lacklustre “party” tracks and the moments of
shining introspection. For every witty, well-paced flow, there's some
annoyingly catchy larrikinism, like “My grandma told me/Never ever
ever take no shit” to disassemble an otherwise fine creation. Major
international guests are featured, such as Wu Tang Clan member RZA, and
Xzibit; yet the former's track isn't nearly is good as it could have
been given the talents on hand, and the latter wastes his spot on
self-congratulating bravado, with dumb lyrics like “Hangin’ in Sin
City/Aussie girls with huge titties/I am not kidding”. Hey yo,
dawg, we heard you like titties…

Wasted
potential aside, there’s also the issue of just how little effort
comes across in the majority of tracks. From “This Is For You”
from 2004’s Flowers in the Pavement to “Bullet and a
Target” from Flying Colours, it’s easy to note that the
best BnE tracks are those with a fire in their figurative bellies,
with unrelenting vitriol and passion abound. That kind of magic is
all but a seldom-seen rarity here, with too many songs dealing with
being ready to do it (“C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!/Let’s go!”), and not nearly enough dealing with actually doing whatever it was in
the first place.

Of
course, the trio are too smart and too experienced to let the entire
record lapse into unforgettable fodder, and there are a slew of
tracks on Running that stand out to the point where you’re
certain there’s hope for them yet. “Late One Night” sees some
of the album’s most inventive and energetic lyrical flows atop what
is unquestionably the best beat of the entire album. It also doubles
as the most unexpected – Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson’s
countrified blues of “Rattlin’ Bones” is chopped up and
scattered amongst a thudding shuffle of glockenspiel, synthesized
handclaps, and a fuzzed-out string sample.

"Reflections”
interpolates the main structure of Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love” and
turns what could have been a recipe for disaster into one of the
finest works of the group’s discography, complete with bleak
lyrical confessionals that make this arguably the darkest song on the
whole album. Needless to say, it benefits from this type of raw-nerve
honesty. The M-Phazes-produced “Riding Through The City” is also
a very fitting and dynamic opener, which sees some of the group’s
quintessentially Australian humour shine through in zingers like “I’m
more street than the Paddle Pop lion”, and “mad hungry, like I’m
Nudge from Hey Dad!”. The double-time switch-up in the beat’s
verses, smooth bass line, catchy sampled chorus and a sneaky Chuck
Berry reference also make this track one of the shining hopes of
Running On Air. Phazes also ensures lightning strikes later in
the track-listing, with the velvety down-tempo groove of “Children
of the Night.” Bliss’ vibrant imagery and Eso’s
bouncing-off-the-walls vitality work to their strongest points here
in particular – and it’s disheartening to think that it’s in
the minority here.

Running On Air aims sky high but has unfortunately landed the group
somewhere in the middle ground. In terms of its standing amongst the
other records in the band’s body of work, it falls notably short of
Colours, a highlight or two ahead of Flowers, and
somewhere around the same mark as 2006’s Day of the Dog. The
only major difference between then and now is that the BnE crew have
acquired significantly more know-how and songwriting experience in
that time, and really should have known better than to regress. At
least, in stepping down from what was questionably an insurmountable
height, they have a better understanding of how they got there in the
first place. Next time will be different.