When I first heard about People in Planes, their intro came to me with the info that they are four Welsh boys. “Yay,” thought I, “potentially cute accents, and they come from a place with such a large span of musical history to draw from. They just must be great!” But neither the fact that they have accents, nor the fact that they come from the UK ,(from which great artists such as The Sex Pistols, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, and Radiohead were birthed,) redeems the lack of delivery on their new album Beyond the Horizon.
I really can’t knock their talent as musicians, but if the production on this album were any more precise and perfect, I would think that nothing was actually played by any of the members of the band. Actually, that’s exactly what it sounds like, so I can definitely knock their judgments as musicians for choosing to sound like a computer. If they were an electronic band, this would be an entirely different story, but they’re not, so we’ve got a problem. The entire album is so over-produced and littered with random effects that it sounds like it was created entirely from samples strung together. Even the vocal tones sound like samples. While People in Planes’ lead singer Gareth Jones has a strong and accurate voice, it’s kind of like that smell that you know you’ve smelled before but you just can’t put your finger on, or that taste that you’ve tasted before but you just can’t think of what it is for the life of you. He sounds like someone and it’s a generic sound that you’ve heard before, but it’s so generic that it’s indistinguishable. C’mon guys, where’s the soul? For a four-piece band that’s trying to do the pop-rock thing, they’ve added some chemically-induced Coca-Cola to that pop-rock, and the end product just causes an upset stomach.
For background noise at a party or for any other situation where music is needed as just white noise, this album is absolutely perfect. It’s up-beat and will get you revved up for that game of beer-pong or tailgating. Other than that, this album should not be sold as a piece of art, but more as an example of how computer programs can suck the very life and soul out of artistic intentions.
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