The lovely folks over at AAM, particularly Tom, gave me Aeroplane Pageant's latest LP "Even The Kids Don't Believe Me" to sample. Earlier, I featured their song Stars Still Pretty here. Aeroplane Pageant(from here on AP) are Brian Kelly (vocals/guitar), Timothy Watson (bass/vocals), Michael Areephituk (lead guitar), Christopher Aguis (guitar/electronics/percussion) and Erik DeAngelis on drums.
What stands out the most in this LP is Kelly's vocals, it seems to be what's driving many of the songs. But it may seem this way because quite a few songs are actually pretty stripped down, featuring simple beats and acoustic plucking to complement Kelly's good vocal range. Like in the titular track, this is very evident. Even The Kids Don't Believe Me sings of feeling lost, and not telling that to a particular person, which should be a girl. Seems to me that this is a song about lost love, but the lyrics are a bit abstract so I'm not too sure myself.
I’m in the closet trying on all of my old shoes
Waiting for someone to come by, say something of use..
I’m in the kitchen listening to the snow hit the ground
Hope to hell someone will tell me, "It’s okay you can go now."
You can really feel the emotions bursting out of his voice, trying to tell the listener something, in both the previous song and this song After The Car Crash. They employ the same plucking of the guitar and light drumbeats and allow Kelly to bring the song to it's greatest height, at "So much for us foxing around/So much for us forgetting ourselves/So much for everything else".
You can hear the percussion in Nobody Gets Hurt where the main character is a spider, who was invited to witness a man and his mistress, and subsequently where a crowd has gathered. But the stand out track is probably Stars Still Pretty. It's the most "un-stripped down" song in the LP. There's a really catchy beat, their standard abstract lyrics. Most of all, they sound like they're having loads of fun in this song.
AP really has lots of imagination and stuff up their sleeves, for I can't really fathom what they're singing about, because the lyrics in one song never seems to be always about one thing, and this could be a good or bad thing. The jury's still not out on that. One thing for sure, is that this LP still seems a bit experimental, trying to find out their best sound, though they somewhat find their ground in songs such as Stars Still Pretty, Even The Kids Don't Believe Me and After The Car Crash. They've got a good vocalist in Kelly, and they need more songs which would showcase the abilities of their guitarists and drummer, which I believe are just as good. One gripe about this LP is that they could have done away with all the less than one minute songs, which seem to be there for the sake of being there. Otherwise, this is a laudable effort by AP and I would expect their first full length album to be nothing short of brilliant, having given us glimpses of it in this LP. Watch out for them for this is one plane you won't want to miss.
You can listen to them at their myspace or head over to last.fm. Their official site also has stuff you might want to check out. And here's a repost of Stars Still Pretty. Really fun and hilarious, not to mention random video of them, certainly befitting of AP.
Aeroplane Pageant - Stars Still Pretty
For those who want to download Stars Still Pretty, here's the link provided by Spinner, as their free mp3 download of the day. (Right click and Save Target As/Save Link As)
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