More Background

The Blue Aeroplanes have always been considered a maverick band. Using banjos and mandolins alongside scratchy post-punk guitars? Having an onstage DJ before hip-hop? Speak-singing poems and songs? Having a male dancer as part of the group? Being from Bristol and not playing trip-hop? Being apparently the only band to have been barred from the Rainbow Lounge, Lemmy’s hangout? Never knowingly involved with any kind of scene, they have always been outsiders. And yet, with a new album out in January, the current musical climate seems a lot more Aeroplanes-shaped.

Speak-singing is now mainstream. Courtney Barnett, Kate Tempest, George the Poet. In 1986 Aeroplanes vocalist Gerard Langley made an acoustic, folk-based album with former Oyster band member Ian Kearey. There were no acoustic instruments on the NME’s defining C86 cassette that year. Now, Ian has made a second duo album, backing Shirley Colllins on her triumphant return to recording, and everyone is mixing electric and acoustic instruments.

James Dean Bradfield has commented that the Aeroplanes were the best live band he had ever seen and the reason the Manics decided to move around on stage. Michael Stipe has written that he only got the nerve to do his ‘E-Bow The Letter’ - style vocals after watching Gerard on tour. In Stewart Lee’s recent immortal phrase, the Aeroplanes have gone from being “Television fronted by Philip Larkin to the Drive-By Truckers fronted by Prisoner-era Patrick McGoohan”.

January will see not only the first new Blue Aeroplanes album since 2011’s ‘Anti-Gravity’ but also the publication of Gerard’s ‘Selected Poems & Lyrics’. The album, ‘Welcome, Stranger!’ is supported by a three-week tour and has been recorded by what is now officially the longest-lasting Aeroplanes lineup ever (four and a half years!). Ex-Aeroplane Angelo Bruschini, Massive Attack’s guitarist, has chipped in with some recording expertise.

One of the most important British bands with a continuous history, their time seems (again?) to have finally come. Never having split up, they have never been involved in the nostalgia business, and ‘Welcome, Stranger!’ is a surprisingly contemporary-sounding statement from a genuinely independent and creative band.

http://www.theblueaeroplanes.com/