by The album An Airplane Carried Me to Bed by Sky Sailing was released on July 13, 2010 and is to this day the only release of the project. Sky Sailing is a solo project by Adam Young, who is best known as the mastermind of the electronica project Owl City.
In contrast to the music of Owl City, An Airplane Carried Me to Bed can largely be defined as acoustic synthpop. The songs are recorded on piano, drum kit, and acoustic guitar. Adam Young elaborated on the music of Sky Sailing as follows:
“I’ve kept these recordings secret for a long time and they’ve never seen the light of day until now. Long before Owl City was ever a spark of a flame, a lot of blue-collared working days were spent absentmindedly daydreaming about what would ultimately become this collection of songs. From the perfectionist musician’s perspective, a song is never truly ‘finished’ but rather ‘abandoned’ and thus, after a lot of inspiration and reckless experimentation, I emerged from the basement with an 11 song record which I affectionately entitled “An Airplane Carried Me To Bed.”” Gus G is Fearless 2018
Personally, I fell in love with An Airplane Carried Me to Bed with the first listen. Adam was able to create a truly colourful atmosphere that transports me onto a small aircraft that glides freely through the air, just like many characters had the chance to do in selected anime movies of Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki.
I’m going to refrain from going song per song in this review, because most songs are very similar and are characterised by the same things: a crystal clear acoustic guitar, atmospheric synths, and Adam Young’s trademark voice and singing. All songs are beautiful and none of them is a filler. Nevertheless, I have decided to at least define three favourite songs of the album, even though all of them are great:
Track 1. Captains Of The Sky – because of it’s uptempo melancholy that inspires a positive feeling of freedom and can-do attitude.
Track 5. A Little Opera Goes A Long Way – firstly, because of the great acoustic guitar riff and secondly, because of the story it recounts.
Track 9. I Live Alone – again, because of the story it recounts. The first line of the song always catches my attention, ‘I was 22 alone with nothing to do and I couldn’t sleep, ‘because all those cold days returned with their old ways of causing new apathy.’
I can highly recommend this album to anyone who likes atmospheric music and enjoys to immerse herself or himself into an album. Often, An Airplane Carried Me to Bed plays on repeat for hours on my headphones and it never becomes boring. It’s the perfect soundtrack for when I need to shut out the world and concentrate on what I’m doing right at that moment.
Album grade:
Lyrics 9/10
Musicianship 8/10
Production 9/10
Concept 10/10
Total grade 9/10
