The Blue Aeroplanes’ unique amalgam of rock, folk, poetry, punk, dance, and art has been an acknowledged influence on a wide range of bands including R.E.M. and Radiohead. Combining pop smarts with serious weirdness, they have released almost thirty albums on various labels, several of which have charted in the UK Top 40 and the US Alternative Top 10.

Now the band has released its twelfth studio album, Welcome, Stranger!, recorded by the longest-lasting Aeroplanes line-up to date. Original members Gerard Langley (poet/singer), and John Langley (drummer), sometimes with Wojtek Dmochowski (dancer), are joined by Gerard Starkie, formerly the main man of Witness and an Aeroplane since 2006, Chris Sharp (bassist and owner of The Fleece venue in Bristol), a band member since 2008, and the more recent additions of Bec Jevons (guitarist and front-person of I Destroy) and guitarist Mike Youe. John and Mike also play with Bristol punk legend (and ex-Aeroplane) Rita Lynch, while Gerard is also Head Of Songwriting at BIMM Bristol, where he was responsible for guiding the early steps of George Ezra, among others.

In an exclusive scoop for The Big Takeover, Gerard Langley runs down a list, with details, of his Top 5 Aeroplanes Tracks:

1. “JAMES” (Rough Music)
James was my friend when I was eighteen and doing my A-levels. He was an older guy (twenty-four), and had seen the world. I learned a lot from him and so did all my immediate circle of the time. He was lovely, and loved. I wrote this poem twenty years after I knew him best, as an example of how ways diverge. I was honoured beyond belief to be asked to read the poem at his funeral ceremony, and can still picture how he would have laughed. I miss him.

2. “JACKET HANGS” (Swagger)
Oh, the way that the star moves around the room. Oh, the way that the star persona works that room like it has a personal bouncer to vet the space between the tables. Oh, just guess at the room service. Oh, just envy the moves and the charm, oh especially the charm. But, also the talent. In fact, entirely the talent, as everything else can be helicoptered, obviously.

3. “DEAD TREE! DEAD TREE!” (Welcome, Stranger!)
Poems, and songs, can be about lots of different things at the same time. That’s kind of the point of them. This is about the Universe. Which is lots of different things at the same time.

4. “BURY YOUR LOVE LIKE TREASURE” (Spitting Out Miracles)
I didn’t regard this much for a while, feeling it was too specific to a particular time, but someone sent me a photograph of a poster outside a church where they had done a graphic for it, and the current band always want to include the number in the set, in spite of not playing on the original. That makes it a democratic song and therefore it has meaning beyond my own memory. Which is a very beautiful memory and survives beyond argument.

5. “MY HURRICANE” (Beatsongs)
Wars happen, though they shouldn’t. Those wars are financed by rich people hoping to influence societal change. Sometimes societal change happens without those rich people pulling the strings, like the UK’s post-WW2 Welfare State, the American Civil Rights movement, the fall of apartheid, the rise of women’s rights. This was written during the first Iraq war, but the only interviewers to understand it were two East Germans from a samizdat magazine just before the Berlin wall came down. The mix of the album version was done live in the studio and involved at least eight people pressing buttons on cue and Angelo Bruschini hand-rotating a 12” reel in time. We did it on the second take. I hope we will all continue to stand against wars.

The Blue Aeroplanes are currently touring the UK. Buy tickets here

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