2/14/2003
Continental
By JEFF MIERS
News Pop Music Critic
Rock progeny surprises with explosive debut CD
Fiction Plane, who played a recent concert in the Continental, goes refreshingly against the corporate-rock grain with music that's tight, explosive and melodic.
One finds strange comfort in a climate when things have sunk as low as they can go. Hey, it can't get any worse, right?
I spent the majority of last year lamenting what I perceived to be the sad state of the music industry.
Everything in the mainstream seemed the same, be it teen pop or radio-friendly rock. These records sounded like they'd been assembled in a lab by men in white coats, while cigar-chomping businessmen grinned greedily in the background.
R&B? Forget it. Someone took the blues out of the equation, leaving only the rhythm and an unfortunate tendency on the part of singers to offer showboating filigree in place of soulful phrasing. (Check any episode of "American Idol" for evidence of this sad fact.)
Hip-hop? Some innovation there, if you looked hard enough.
"But what about songs, man?" I'd passionately query anyone foolish enough to spend more than five minutes in my presence. "Whatever happened to the art of songwriting?"
Stumbling into the Continental a few weeks back, I got my answer.
Like Jon Landau (who happened upon a Bruce Springsteen club date way back when and went on to proclaim in print: "Last night I saw the future of rock 'n' roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen"), I had a bit of an epiphany as four young lads - three Londoners, one from Indiana - took the stage and offered a blistering set of post-pop, angular rock music so refreshingly against the current corporate-rock grain as to seem unique.
The band, Fiction Plane, was tight, explosive, melodic, full of the irreverence of youth but also plainly aware of the tradition of rock songwriting. I imagined it must have been a similar experience for denizens of Greenwich Village who happened to catch an early set by the art-rock act Television, in the mid-1970s. Initial skepticism gives way to an inkling of surprised delight. By the end of the evening, you're a fan for life.
Fiction Plane played to 100 or so people in the Continental, none of whom could have been familiar with the band's songs. Its MCA debut, "Everything Will Never Be OK," won't hit stores until March 11. Yet the band won the crowd over all but instantly.
Yes, part of the band's appeal comes in the form of one Joe Sumner (more on the familiarity of his name later), vocalist-guitarist-principal songwriter, a good-looking and energetic kid with a killer set of pipes. But in truth, Fiction Plane is a band in the old sense of the word, whereby each part is necessary to the success of the whole. It's a guitar band, but in the way Television and the Smiths were guitar bands - chordal washes, melodic lines, angular, edgy interplay, a decided lack of flash.
On record, under the auspices of veteran producer David Kahne, Fiction Plane soars; at the Continental show, and another I caught last week inside Cleveland's Agora Ballroom, a nervous energy added to the excitement. The band is young, pushing through its material with the precociousness of youth and the almost naive force of will that fuels the best punk-based music. Realizing that the band is in its nascent stage is part of what endears it to you.
But "Everything Will Never Be OK" arrives fully formed. These guys sound like they've been making records for years; in fact, this is their first proper experience in the recording studio. A previous incarnation as Santa's Boyfriend yielded some low-budget studio demos and is available through the band's Web site. But "Everything" is, for all intents and purposes, the band's debut.
It's terribly impressive. If "Listen to My Babe" can't be a radio hit, I have lost all faith in radio as a vehicle for the furthering of rock as an art form. "Cigarette" throbs and sweats like a speed freak in a coffee shop. The title track has elements of folk and a chorus that worms its way into the folds of your cerebellum for good. "Hate" is an ample showcase for Sumner's remarkable voice, and bemoans, with a punk's snarl, the trendiness of nihilism.
There's not a single dud among these 12 tracks. When's the last time you could say that about a new band's debut effort?
In Cleveland, Fiction Plane was allowed a mere 25 minutes opening a bill that included the truly awful Vendetta Red, the aptly named Something Corporate and the vastly overrated Juliana Theory. It still managed to shine, once again winning over a crowd that had probably never heard a lick of its music. The unfortunate pairing of the band with three decidedly lesser acts served to underscore the hope one feels when listening to it; perhaps things are beginning to change a bit for the better. Perhaps.
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