The Blue Aeroplanes – Anti Gravity (Art Star/Albino Two)

4 stars
Long before REM lost their edge, Bristol's Blue Aeroplanes were their
English counterparts, ploughing an urgent furrow of spikily jangular
folk-rock with multiple guitars zinging about every which way to
backdrop lead auteur Gerard Langley's tumbles of opaque, semi
spoken-word murmurs. Thirty years and forty-two members on, several
generations of Aeroplanes combine for this fresh-as-a-daisy sprawl
through more of the same. From the opening firework bursts that precede
the forboding swirls of 'Sulphur' to the elegiac 'Cancer Song' that
closes things, this is a dense epic chiming with wisdom and experience,
art-rock's rich tapestry personified anew.

The List, July 2011

ends

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