Can one review one of his favorite musician’s new band without sounding like a fanboy? This new side-project by Planes Mistaken For Stars will tell me. And you.
Planes Mistaken for Stars were/are one of the most important bands at the crossing between hardcore and midwestern emo without ever being emo-core. They released several full lengths all to critical acclaim. Two members of the band now release a Covid-quarantine EP under the moniker Blunt Razors and via Deathwish (where PMFS also published their last full length). Gared O’Donnell and Neil Keener have collected six tracks, one being a cover of the Kate Bush song “Under Ice”. Their record is pure Midwestern magic with lots of spherical guitar lines, hushed up drums and a voice to fall to your knees to. The whole things becomes even more intimate when we remember that Gared is undergoing medical treatment for cancer. The songs show a kind of longing and wishing that it becomes hard not to fall in love with them. It’s like Cyrano watching his beloved from afar and never quite getting her attention. The last lines in “Amber Waves” are a perfect example for this: “I’m just a minute / A minute above you babe / Could you meet me / Would you keep me / Could you give me your minutes / To drown in amber waves”. The narrator is so close to his beloved but yet there is this unbridgeable distance so that he can only dream of them being together and chase new ways. We share these moments and the duo has this ability of drawing us into the songs so much, that we do not feel like observers anymore but participants. The melodies are so delicate and the whole setting so calming and soothing that one cannot but hit repeat and repeat and repeat.
(So how did this author do?)
