Review: Everything will never be ok - Fiction Plane

Anger, fear, wanting to die and wanting to live: it's all here.

Fiction Plane has put together a jangly, power-gushing CD that's at once full of vitality and deterioration.

The hooky tunes are more immediately accessible, of course. After a couple of listens, "Cigarette", "Hate", and "I wish I would die" were my stand-out picks.

"Everything will never be ok" is ambivalent about the ways people frame their suffering, and seems to advocate temporary escapism ("It's just as real to escape as to suffer") instead of constant self-absorbtion. The power pop confidence of the song pulls it out of its introspection, though.

"Cigarette" has viscerally disgusting description of what its like to have a partner who smokes, not to mention the funniest use of "meth" I've ever seen:

Girl you smoking cigarettes
Rancid poison on your breath
Taste yourself you smell like death
To love you I must drink my meth

Kiss you is like lick the street
Tar and spit between my teeth
Heart attacks and sweet relief
Take your pleasures life is brief

"Fallow" takes a determined turn toward the sun, and includes some backing vocals which I really liked. "Real Real" annoyed me initially but then grew on me, especially with lines like, "A glowing hypnotist sells us a beauty we don't need" and "We give our days to nothing / But we're not prepared to bleed".

Real Real's first stanza reaches Radiohead levels of self-disgust, and indeed the following track, "Everybody Lies" has moans that sound a bit like Thom Yorke. The Radiohead vibe carries on into track ten, "Sickness", but we snap back to Fiction Plane with "Silence" and the claustrophobia of a character assumed by the singer.

Rating: 3/5

Highlights: "Cigarettes", "Hate", "Real Real"

Similar to: Radiohead, smidgen of Eels and perhaps We Are Scientists

Image: Photography by Perou, design by Chris Turner @ Dark Matter