Rough Music

THE BLUE AEROPLANES: “Rough Music” (Beggars Banquet)

WHEN GERARD Langley – the rumpled, adorable old rogue who has fronted the Blue Aeroplanes for more years than even he cares to remember – explains, during ‘Secret Destination’, that “We love the world/We just want it to be better,” he quite rudely takes the sentiments, if not the exact words, right out of my mouth. I love old Ger like a brother, have done since ‘Jacket Hangs’ and always will, but his band is becoming a boring, bitter disappointment.

You youngsters may scoff, but what I’m about to tell you is absolutely true: when I were a lad, this group were the hippest, sexiest thing in all of Bristol-dom. The emergence of Massive Attack, Tricky and (the lovely but massively overrated?) Portishead have sort of helped to relieve them of that particular crown, but the Blue Aeroplanes obviously decided that resistance was useless. Their demise is mostly self-inflicted.

When they ruled the roost, around the time of the classic Swagger and the incomparable Beatsongs, they ruled with good reason. Those records are maelstroms; the multitude of Rickenbackers swivel and pivot around one another, creating a soaring, singular mesh of – to quote ‘Sugared Almond’ – fun and colour, sex and sound and song that surrounds Gerard’s frenzied rantings and sweet ramblings like an extremely well-fitting leather glove. They strutted. These days, though, they jangle. The sound they make is – to quote ‘James’ – “quaint and kind of parent.” Worst of all, they are sloggers, and Gerard should make them stop.

He hasn’t changed a bit, is the thing; he can’t possibly, his vision is far too unique. He continues to witter on endearingly about his own world, a mysterious bohemia where breakfast is red wine and a fag and afternoons are spent reading Baudelaire and looking troubled and enigmatic in whatever the Bristol equivalent of Montmarte is; a place and time where it’s still absolutely vital that your jacket hangs, just so. His affecting way with words (“I didn’t do this voluntarily/You can’t always choose your company/Your blood gets stirred/By these passive affections” – ‘Contact High’) makes anything he touches special and his enlightening and sensitive delivery needs more than this generic jangly mush.

So, when he hooks up with some of his fellow Bristolians or continues to fiddle with jazz, as happens on ‘Secret Destination’, and when he bids farewell to Rodney Allen, who has become the worst singer and writer in the entire world, then the masses may start crawling back to his feet again. If he chooses not to ditch the indie losers, his place in the wilderness is assured. And deserved.

• Niall Crumlish