Planes Mistaken For Stars
Mercy

On a parquet floor lie countless dusty records, vinyls that are truly daunting, so much so that many bands remain trapped there and are lost in an unspecified oblivion, waiting for someone to rediscover them and perhaps give them the rightful attention they deserve by putting them in the deserving spotlight. How many times have we heard of artists and works (re)discovered after the fact that should have had a different fate when they were freshly released from the hands of record labels and musicians? Far too many. This must be what Jacob Bannon thought when, in 2012, he decided to ink a deal with his Deathwish for a band that, from sparse Peoria in Illinois and then Denver, at the turn of the '90s and '00s, released an unbroken chain of weighty works in that undefined mix that means everything and nothing called post-hardcore. Musical roots that reach everywhere but with a fierce lo-fi and underground belief always dominant. The name of this group is Planes Mistaken for Stars, and the full-length that will resurrect this summer, polished and with new production behind it, is "Mercy", the last gasp before the breakup that occurred two years after this release, precisely in 2008. Meanwhile, a murky niche has swallowed one of the most valid recent examples of how to convey an atmosphere desperately abandoned to itself, without appearing excessively cathartic, quite the opposite. Inside, pessimism strikes violently and takes no prisoners.

A hoarse voice worn by time and exasperated, almost as if it were constantly exhaling the last breath after a difficult battle, is the calling card of Gared O'Donnell, who then sees fit to strike more than willingly at the strings, not only vocal but also on a guitar that, crossing paths with Chuck French's, roars without retreating an inch, seeking to leave an indelible mark in a life constantly hammered by illusions where finding the right balance is a mission practically aborted at the outset, if not suicidal. Gared is not one of those twenty-year-olds who spews all possible resentment, his and that of the Planes Mistaken for Stars is a methodical chaos, yet so spontaneous and built without the intent to appear undefined. There's a widely spread melodic suffering, a fatigue that would drag the old white-haired man discussed a couple of centuries ago to the depths. A meticulous search in the choices of how to best blend a tormented soul with a rage that tastes of the bitterest resignation are the winning weapons of "Mercy" in a few words. There is no grace, only failures and betrayals that rise to the surface and are sinisterly cast back into the personal hell contained in sharp, edgy, disorienting, and unhealthy tracks that leave one enchanted in the dark scenario built step by step, with cards on the table that change rapidly, rejecting a linear path. Everything burns, and the Planes Mistaken for Stars burn with what they themselves have created.

Trembling, Gared feeds his anxieties. The rest of the group follows suit with the heavy and abrasive reverberation of the bass, which thunders decisively in the storm unleashed by the intertwining guitars that gradually distort the arpeggios initially launched as a life preserver, but which quickly reveal themselves to be double-edged weapons, capable of changing shape and reaffirming the alarming sense of urgency that the music of Planes Mistaken for Stars carries in its skeleton. An exception will occur only in the concluding "Penitence", where in the surreal calm, after a drum that has struck mercilessly more than once, comes the most raw awareness of embarking on a path leading to a point of no return. This was "Mercy", nothing more than a scant forty minutes of violent proceeding capable of finding its most powerful energy source in arid disillusionment. A record, a band that, admiring the constant evolution since the first "Fuck with Fire", deserves this revival, for which we have to thank Bannon & Co. once more. So let us sing one last time, one last goodnight.