tasteful

“We like it to be exploding with colorful, vibrant pumpkins—but still in a tasteful way,” said Gonzalez.

It’s Monday afternoon in Madison Heights, a stately Pasadena neighborhood where the seasonal decor is as tasteful and predictable as a Hallmark movie.

On many of these songs, Ms. Case places her poetic narratives in a chamber-pop setting, with tasteful orchestrations augmenting guitar, piano, bass and drums.

Even if the gyre of contemporary fandom demands mess, spite, flops and redemption arcs, Lipa glides over all of it, with morally sound politics and an immaculately tasteful book club to spare.

The band immediately followed it with the score for Sofia Coppola’s debut feature, “The Virgin Suicides,” and those two albums locked in Air as the ultimate turn-of-the-century band for tasteful European melancholy.