Ladies and gentlemen, PEOPLE IN PLANES have just entered the building.Prepare to be wowed and bowled over by a display of melodic almost-prog-rock with semi-operatic vocals, fabulous musicianship, and really, really good songs. If you like Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, and Radiohead, then you'll love this band.
You can always gage the audience's reaction to a band by the amount of digital cameras and camera phones that go flying up at the first sign of a photo opportunity - and this band had their fair share of that going on. Every member of the band passionately whizzed themselves across the stage, and there was a significant amount of tambourine waving going on. Photo-Op-Arama.
Gareth Jones (vocals), is a charismatic front man with a voice similar to that of Eddie Vedder and Thom Yorke, and with cheekbones to die for. Peter Roberts (guitarist, vocals), is essentially a mop of scruffy hair with a nose poking out, and a talented musician who danced like his feet were on fire. The bassist was doing a lot of axe wielding, and the drummer and
keyboardist were happily moshing along. And although the crowd was full of shoe-gazers and eyeliners, they looked about as happy as convention would allow.
Their rather fabulous tune, "If You Talk Too Much (My Head Will Explode)" was a climatic, hard, theatrical rock number, with a nice sneaky middle-eight thrown in the middle that wasn't there on the CD. You want to know how to fire up an audience? Play an immense guitar solo of epic proportions at them while repeatedly shouting "Explode!!!!" - it gets them every time.
The gig was great, although I did wonder at one point why it is that all the tall people seem to migrate right to the front of the most pit? It's not fair, I'm 5"4, give me a break. It's worse when they're all holding their bloody mobile phones in the air. Forgive me, however, I digress.
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The other thing that I've started to wonder about recently, and this applies to People in Planes a tad, is that when music is described as 'Dark' (as theirs has been), is this because all the band's songs are in a minor key? Does it not send them mad? Do they not know the power of D-Minor (the saddest of all keys etc.)? I bet People in Planes could do 'Happy' really well if they chose. I'll keep an eye out for their future material and see if they come up with the goods on that one.
My only other (minor) issue was that they ended on a song called 'Barracuda', which opened with the Darth Vader death march. It's a matter of taste I know, but I did cringe a bit at that point. Oh well, they are young after all; they can be forgiven for a little self-indulgence I guess.
All in all, People in Planes are ace, they're great live, and they are ripe for the UK Rock scene, so watch this space for next year - no doubt we'll be hearing a lot more from this band in the near future.
(Recently signed to US label Wind-Up Records, their debut album will be released in Spring 2006.)
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