By Kat Goddard
The first thing the four members of Fiction Plane say is that they don’t want to talk about singer Joe Sumner's father, Gordon, as in Gordon Sumner, as in Sting.  “We want to be accepted for what we do. So, no we don’t want to mention that at all,” says bassist Dan Brown. “People are finding out about Joe’s dad and maybe it makes them listen to us the first time when they wouldn’t have otherwise. But it is better if they like us for our music.”
The comparisons are inevitable because Sumner did inherit a great set of pipes, but Fiction Plane  (Sumner, Brown, guitarist Seton Daunt and drummer Pete Wilholt), will not trade on Sting’s famous name. So far, at least, they have succeeded. On their Everything Will Never Be Okay debut, one is not likely to mistake Fiction Plane for Sumner’s father’s band--- even if the first thing many critics compare Fiction Plane’s debut to is early Police. On songs like “Silence,” the band takes on a style much closer to hardcore than pop, while dark lyrics are cloaked in complex but deceptively light melodies on “Everything Will Never Be OK.” The human rights conscience of Fiction Plane marches through the anti-war rocker “Soldier Machismo.”  (The quartet also has made efforts to be environmentally sensitive by insisting their album be produced “carbon neutral,” and plans to plant .
” At a preservation project in the Tensas River Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana, over 1500 trees will be planted to “neutralize” an amount of carbon-dioxide equal to that added by their CD throughout the production process.
Releasing their first full-length album after a decade of trying on sound styles and band names, one of which (Santa’s Boyfriend) was one unfortunate experiment, might seem odd, but it took that long for everything to work out. Brown and Sumner started a band in high school,  “But for a while we were all kinda’ doing our own thing,” and went on to play in other bands separately,” he remembers.” After college the time seemed right for all of them to work together.  While the time was right, the place was not. “When we first started up Fiction Plane, England was still in the throes of an obsession with dance music,” Brown says. "That was all that the clubs were playing. They didn’t really book any live bands. “
So Fiction Plane came over to the US “to get in on the beginnings of this whole new wave of rock.” That was their first exposure to the American music industry.  Back in London, their hometown scene was slowly recovering from that dark period for London rock and Fiction Plane returned to find a comfortable home at West London club The King’s Head. “Before it used to be us hassling promoters to beg for a gig on a Monday night,” Brown says. “It is sort of like our home ground. We always play there. It is really just a run-down old rock club, a pub really, but we love it. It’s just home.”   Now that London clubs have been inundated with American artists playing (and selling out), the band knew they had to crack the US market.
 “In the UK you can tour for two weeks and you’re done-- you’ve been to all the clubs,” Seton says, with nods and murmurs of assent from his band mates. “Here we can tour for a year and not hit every area. We want to be a touring band.”

May/June 2003 © Altar Native