Not long ago, we featured not one but two tracks by the post-punk outfit LONDON PLANE, an emerging tour-de-force on the New York music scene with an audience now extending well abroad these days. After all, their forthcoming long-player is not their first and, if the past year alone is anything to judge the band by, there have also been some solid offerings to chew on for the alternative rock crowd, with a seemingly range in influence from Bauhaus and Blancmange to Transvision Vamp and The Darling Buds.
London Plane is made up of David Mosey (guitar and vocals), Jessica Cole (vocals), Bryan Garbe (drums), Grant Parker (bass), Julian Tulip (synths) and Kristofer Widholm (guitar). Their long-awaited 11-track album ‘Bright Black’ will be released on June 17 via Declared Goods.
Just as we catch our breath, the band has dished out another few sonic offerings – First comes the single ‘Bright Black’, which is not the latest release, but one that we missed upon its release, so it’s time to play catch-up a bit. This song sees female-male vocals in tandem and the whole affair is wonderfully orchestrated. The arrangement and production are well planned and performed. They sound fabulous together with a distinct sound, despite there being multiple possible references (which music has ever been born of a void – no doubt you’ll also recall certain fave bands from your own playlist).
The second lush offering – ‘Come Out of the Dark’ – is markedly different, most notably because the vocalist is Jessica Cole rather than David Mosey. With echoes of The Primitives and Kim-led Pixies and also college rock era-peers The Primitives, this high energy makes you want to hit the dance floor to their live performance. Something to look forward to should the band decide to tour with fewer Covid-related mandates to worry about.
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About this single, David Mosey says, “Come Out of the Dark is a simple rejection of isolation and aloneness. Following months of quarantining, the song is a thinly veiled allusion to the pandemic and the social and political conflicts that have carved chasms both internally and externally. The video – depicting a stranded space traveler – is a metaphor for the desolation from which the country, the world, and perhaps you are emerging.”
London Plane formed after a chance meeting in 2014 backstage at a tribute show to the recently deceased Lou Reed, when Psychedelic Furs’ Joe McGinty introduced David to Jessica (both performed that night in separate acts). Following the success of their debut album ‘New York Howl’, released in 2018, London Plane methodically worked on new material in 2019 and early 2020. The result is ‘Bright Black’, an album packed with hope in the face of cultural, sociopolitical, and ecological devastation, screaming a passionate battle cry back to the pop music spectrum. In effect, a hook-filled avant-rock study in context and contradictions.
As of May 18, the single will be released digitally everywhere, including Apple Music,Spotify and Bandcamp, where it is also an instant-grat download upon ordering the full ‘Bright Black’ album, out on June 17. Apart from being available on Bandcamp, the album can also be obtained and pre-saved at https://found.ee/yM0q4
