Fiction Plane Everything will never be ok
Even though their pilot is a bloke named Joe Sumner, who happens to be Sting’s son, Fiction Plane never fully get off the ground with their debut, Everything will never be ok.
The promising first half of the album combines Britpop with 80s bouncy sensibility on songs like ‘Cigarette,’ on which Sumner addresses his disenchantment with being a celebrity son. Tap into the angst-fest of ‘Hate,’ which delivers the chorus ‘We’re cool, we’re different/ And we hate things,’ over Joshua Tree-era U2 guitar stylings and vocals.
The album’s beginning stages also draw you in with hooky guitars and melodies, especially on the album’s title track and the leadoff ‘Listen To My Babe,’ on which Sumner’s near-vibrato yelps sound like a Britpop Chris Cornell in a not-entirely-unpleasant way.
The songwriting has a catchy Superdrag vibe to it, and Fiction Plane pulls it off well until the Top 40 pop song ‘Soldier Machismo,’ which could take the band to the land of Deep Blue Something and ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.’ The band continues to go off course with the slight samba beat, acoustic guitar and backing vocals that infuse ‘Fallow,’ which could easily be mistaken for a Rusted Root B-side.
The end of the album is spotty, with songs that don’t fit into the previous mold the band made at the beginning, and the album suffers because of it.
Fiction Plane is right. Everything will never be okay, and for the most part, this CD is included.
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