Air Miami's Me, Me, Me

In the mid-90s, Teen Beat seemed like a little brother to the bigger folks of Sub Pop and Matador, the type of little brother that's both oblivious as to his dorkiness and cocky about it at the same time. Indie rock crowds being what they are, Teen Beat grew larger in popularity as mob mentality took over (conformity apparently being of much larger appeal than thought), regardless of the vast amouts of shite they released. A large proponent of that, I suppose, was Mark Robinson.

Air Miami came on the heels of Robinson and Bridget Cross' other hip band, Unrest (Unrest drummer Phil Krauth going on to release inconsistent solo material...much like *spoiler!* Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross...). The differences are near-negligable, but they're there. Robinson seemed obsessed with 80's new wave and all that dance punk stuff 20 years before the most recent revival, and thus Air Miami's got a slight bit more of that sort of flair; Cross continued with her sad sack material to even it out. The results are hit and miss: at times it's infectious ("I Hate Milk," "World Cup Fever," and "You Sweet Little Heartbreaker"), at other times it's limp and boring ("Dolphin Expressway," "Seabird").

Robinson's still got a penchant for that in-your-face irony, the sort of which most folk hopefully outgrew in their teens. It's a little bit charming at first, not having listened to Me, Me, Me in seven or eight years. That charm doesn't last past the first listen, and becomes a numbing annoyance after the second.