---

For many people, water is very important. I am proudly not one of them. I have staggered through six-week time blocks with accidental shower yawning being the only time that untampered-with H20 has entered my body.

It’s value and necessity is obvious, human physiology being the pile of overheated fragility it is. However, there’s enough of water’s remnants floating around in things that I enjoy more than the original that I figure keeping my kidneys relatively grime free shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

It’s not that I have anything against water, it’s just I wish it was better, not fundamentally different, newer, nearer to my own life experience and demands. The whole clear, tasteless, refreshing thing has been done to a moist death.

Water needs to take its game to the next level, because I want it to be as important to me as it is to everyone else. I’m tired of standing behind the bus stop bench, frowning confusedly at passersby grinning into their Evian flasks. I want to be in the loop, under the current. I wish water could reinvent itself without losing the point to why and how it sustains life — like People In Planes did to Radiohead.

Radiohead is one of the best, and, somehow, one of the biggest bands in history. Initially, they wrote jangly, jittery, indescribably lovely alt-rock tunes that Thom Yorke careened through with no regard at all for his throat muscles and your limits. They were natural, immediately necessary, noise as water, songs as a pre-requisite for life.

However, they’ve spent the better part of the last six years figuring out how to be a little more difficult, adding pauses and obscure German sine wave generators and 14 syllable words about rabbit plagues. The songs are still great, but, it’s not water anymore, the chemicals have changed, they’re just not as important. People In Planes has figured out how to take Radiohead’s water and take it to the next level, freeze it, steam it, change it while leaving it completely the same.

Better than The Bends?

Their new album, As Far As The Eye Can See, sounds like The Bends, if The Bends was made by Englishmen who were born in the 80’s, which is exactly what it turns out to be. The songs are a bit faster or a bit slower, the extremes are extended, the product of an age where information and inspiration is hucked into brains on a shotgun second per second basis.

Lead singer Gareth Jones can’t quite caterwaul like Thom, but he keeps his mouth open exactly as wide as his eyes on every chorus.

And, the riffs, dear god, the riffs. People In Planes have discovered how to make water better without missing the point. I plan on carrying their album with me when I go shopping for a Britta filter. Hope the luck carries through.[[In-content Ad]]

---