I try to keep my impact small / Don’t we all? — “Cliff Diver”, The Planes (2025)
Words by Jason Lee
Let’s talk numbers.
On The Planes’ Motel for Lightning Bug (released 10/18 on Totally Real Records), the quintessentially NYC indie band born at the height of the Cakeshop Era or Trash Bar Era or Fort Useless Era or take your pick, present the world w/their fifth EP or their sixth LP or their 19th maxi-cassingle (take your pick!) cuz at 20 minutes long we’re hedging our bets, format-wise, on this the band’s first release since transitioning from a three-piece to a four-piece with Motel proving that under the watchful eye of band mastermind, Stephen Perry, the Planes can add a new member and still retain the rough-hewn charm of their paired-down, revved-up sound—lean & mean & twee™ in equal measure somehow—blown up to a bigger aspect ratio than ever before thanks in part to Zach Rescignano‘s production work and “fourth man” Patrick Porter‘s expansive guitar palette…
…with the EP/LP/digital maxi-cassingle serving as the latest chapter in the Planes’ ongoing project of distilling decades worth of guitar-based indyrawk from ‘80s jangle to ‘90s grunge, Noughties garage-rock revivalism to Tennies/Teenies psych-rock revivalism, into compact three-minute blasts of strummage and shreddage, thwakage and throbbage [editor’s note: these are not real words] that sound like no one else but themselves and really you couldn’t ask for a nicer bunch of guys to consensually hit you with a gutbucket one-two punch of rockus indiecus awash in chiming power-pop hooks and sludgy power-chord riffs (not since Smiths-era Morrissey has any man looked this nonchalant holding a bouquet of flowers) with the Planes having mastered the art of taking the most elemental elements of indie rock and making ’em add up to more than the sum of their parts…
…all revolving around the core of Stephen’s highly caffeinated guitar playing and macha-infused vocalizing (Google’s AI describes macha as “a balance of sweet, vegetal, and slightly bitter notes” as if it knew we were really asking about the Planes’ music and Stephen’s singing) as supported by their current hard-driving, in-the-pocket rhythm section, a two-pronged slingshot hurling the songs into space with MFLB claimed to be the swan song (sadly!) of much-beloved drummer Don Lavis so pour one out cuz his stickwork rips throughout, perfectly attuned to the music as it shifts from slacktastically shambolic to aggressively pyrotechnic, not infrequently both at once, complete with heart-on-sleeve and sweat-on-brow at asall times…
Official band bio: The Planes were founded in 2009 in a dilapidated Brooklyn apartment by Massachusetts-born songwriter Stephen Otto Perry and a loose collection of friends. Soon a regular lineup was formed and the band began playing local shows in venues that are now all banks, condos, or overpriced restaurants. They released their first full-length album in 2011, and since then have chugged along with a rotating cast of characters. Through sporadic gigging, half-hearted DIY promo, and the kind words of a few bloggers, DJs, and playlisters, The Planes have built a small global fanbase, from London to New London.
…with another key aspect of the Planes’ narrow-wide appeal being Stephen’s finely observed everyman- and everywoman-oriented lyrics, a veritable song of myself containing multitudes based around a handful of the eight million stories of the Naked City recounted in the unassuming manner of a sidewalk social scientist who knows how seemingly small lives can have big consequences with the Planes’ plainly laying out their mission statement from the first lines on the first song off their first album, “First Song” (2011), with its opening enumeration of ethnographic subjects:
“The normal lives of boring people,
Software cannot save them yet,
The little lives of honor students,
Waiting for the teacher’s pet,
The endless nights of party people,
The mornings so full of regret,
The awesome lives of stupid people,
The bad news that they just forget“
OFFICIAL ALBUM STATEMENT: Recorded before Dark Matter Recycling Co. drummer Don Lavis left the band, Motel For Lightning Bug is a grab-bag of the very best of the band in 2024–2025. The aforementioned Lavis shines on every track with metronomic timing and powerful fills, while new bassist Mike Petzinger completes the rhythm section with a solid melodic foundation. Patrick Porter joins Perry on guitar to create a fuzzy sonic assault, adding a new dimension to the band’s sound. Incoming drummer Josh Inman even gets in on the fun, laying down backing vocals on the EP. Recorded and mixed by Zach Rescignano at EWEL in Brooklyn and mastered by Carl Saff.
FROM AN INTERVIEW POSTED ELSEWHERE: To me, the “lightning bug” in the EP’s title represents the spark of creativity we had after Dark Matter Recycling Co., and I’m glad we found a little place for it to live, the Motel, if you will, before moving on with a new lineup..
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“The most important track is track number one. It’s gotta be familiar, but also unexpected. Most importantly, it’s gotta make you feel good.” — Zoë Kravitz as “Rob”
The quote above, taken from the Hulu series remake of High Fidelity starring Zoë Kravitz (cancelled after one season, boo!), a gender-flipped remake of the 2000 record-store set rom-com directed by Stephen Frears and starring John Cusack that itself was an adaptation of Nick Hornby’s deeply British 1995 novel transplanted to Chicago, is likely familiar territory to a fellow music-nerd like Mr. Perry but either way highly apropos to the new record which likewise starts off in “familiar but also unexpected” territory as it opens with the band covering one of their own songs, namely, “Tear the World Apart,” the third track from their aforementioned debut LP, namely, Echo Forever/Forever Echo (2013), a major-key, feel-good banger that still surfaces in their live sets so a reboot’s due, X number of lineups later..
…with the song echoing into the present day w/subtle musical switch-ups making all the difference: a bass dropout here and a whammy bar there all set to a disco-rock riddim you could easily strut down the sidewalk to Tony Manero-style and a sharp, crisp sound that takes the song from loose, loping Wilco-esque or better yet Wednesday-esque twang-rocker to a more motorik, inwardly-driven, self-reflective sound to our ears, fitting for a song about the impudence of youth looked back upon nearly 15 years later with the song’s narrator opting for ramshackle urban romanticism over a potentially real-life romance if he followed a presumed significant other to LA, staying put instead amongst “the trash and the streets” of NYC with both of ’em “tearing the world apart” we suppose in their own way or at least that’s our take on it…
…but don’t worry, the Planes aren’t about to jump on the Taylor Swift bandwagon with a “Stephen’s Version” remake of their first album, self-covering only one more of their own songs on the final track with four new ones sandwiched in between with track #2 “Radio Summer” being the most “Inbetween(y) Days” of the bunch, sorta like if Sebadoh did a collab with the Cure w/its pristinely strummed guitar chords supporting a nursery rhyme like melody interrupted by sudden outbursts of noise as “a love letter to small bands touring America during the rise of authoritarianism” with its narrator hoping to be granted “one last shot at American summer […] like buckshot across the field of fire,” which is something we wish for as well every year when May rolls around and then just as suddenly it’s September and we resolve to try again next year but that’s ok cuz summer’s ostensibly more about the buzz of anticipation than actual follow-through anyway…
… with “Radio Summer” reaffirming the Planes’ jangle rock bonifides on a song that captures the rapture of the open road where “the mile marker signs just keep on coming” with nary a mention of there being any ultimate destination tho’ even without one “it’s a finger in the face of the king” to be so blissfully free even where freedom translates to aimlessness tho’ far from being aimless the track itself does exactly what Zoë Kravitz/John Cusack says second tracks need to do, “There needs to be an element of surprise. Because what you’re saying here is: keep listening. There might be more here than you thought,” with the song’s airy sense of free-floating freedom set in relief to the sure & steady perspective of “Tear the World Apart”…
…while next track “Manhole Fire” shows off the band in full-on Bob Mould Beast Mode™ on “a punk track inspired by an actual manhole fire that happened outside the hospital in which Perry’s daughter was being born (and the ultra-hip Gen Z-er who confidently descended into the 77th Street 6 station while the chaos unfurled) which works as a perfect fit for the rollicking rave-up of a tune featuring a Dick Dale-esque, double-picked guitar solo from Stephen no doubt written in the maternity ward’s waiting room…
…with “Cliff Diver” coming next, track four being the perfect spot to drop the kind of song that makes you feel 10X cooler just for being in its presence sorta like a real cliff diver with a “buzz bin” worthy, relentless monster riff that’d be plastered all over MTV’s Alternative Nation if not for the current dominance of un-reality shows like Help! I’m in a Secret Relationship! with plenty of additional tasty licks and multiple downshift modulations upping the heaviness quotient even further, a perfectly gravity-fixated setting for lyrics like “If I hit the rocks today / have a drink in my name / and in lieu of roses on my grave / pick a memory to save,” on a track described as “an affirmation of life…[written] after reading about Screaming Females calling it quits”…
…and finally we arrive at the last new original “Sleep/Gash,” which is the first track not to ratchet up the intensity and/or tempo from what came before tho’ still it’s the logical climax of the EP we think with the Planes shifting into full blown slow-burn, lighter-waving, shogazey dream–pop power-ballad mode which is a treat seeing as they only drop one of these blissed-out swaying-intensely-in-place gems every album cycle or two with the last one coming on 2021’s Eternity on the Edge and its closing romantic devotional “Unglued” (the last minute of 2023’s “Freezehead” could count too) with “Sleep/Gash” upping the ante by adding a weeping slide-guitar line wrapped around Perry’s dolorous vocals on a song “about the pain of seeing a loved one deal with grief” and entreating them to “open your eyes / get off the floor / you realize / there’s no easy cure”…
…and really where can you go from there except for another re-recording of a classic tune which in this case means “The Box (MFLB version),” a song first heard on 2017’s Wax Diamond about a wannabe fox in the henhouse whose luck finally runs out, culminating in a flurry of swarming guitar lines like a flurry of divebombing Lucifer bees and if you wanna know what it all adds up to in the end, sorry, but you’ll have to do the math on that one yourself tho’ if you’ve known Steven & Co. for most of the Planes’ run as we have, the Motel for Lightning Bug EP is a tasty fruit-cocktail mix of past, present, potential futures and honeydew melon or think of it as a sort of “greatest hits” even if 2/3 of the tunes appear here for the first time cuz either way it’s a fitting summation of the Planes’ various stylistic lanes that manages to capture their live sound with a certain degree of verisimilitude…
…and if we could travel back in time (“I’m gonna be the first commuter from the future to the past”) and hear ’em play these songs at Goodbye Blue Monday (the Bushwick DIY space of yore festooned with dozens if not hundreds of stuffed animals and other assorted knick-knacks once likened to “a hoarder’s rented storage space serving beer” where the Planes played their second gig and where yr humble scribe played on multiple occasions…no wonder they went outta bizness…today it’s a mildly upscale Tiki Bar which is way better than being a condo or a bank, esp. given we now live about a block away) or the Northside Festival or CMJ Music Marathon circa 2009 or 2013 or 2017, we doubt anyone would even bat an eyelash…
…and what’s more the EP’s songs would fit perfectly on our Zune “2009 NEW TUNEZ” playlist alongside period classics like “Heads Will Roll,” “Lisztomania,” and “Starlett Johansson” we’d play on loop on our way from Harlem to Bushwick back in the day so fire up the DeLorean and let’s go…
The Planes play this Friday 11/14 at Main Drag Records alongside Marvelle Oaks (another record release!), Sunshine Convention, and Flatscreen and if you wanna stay on the Totally Real tip all weekend, label founder and longtime Planes compatriot Bryan Bruchman’s new band Hand Gestures plays Baker Falls on Sat. 11/15 jus’ saying…