London Plane, a six-piece rock band based in New York City, release their debut LP New York Howl. It's a Synth Rock offering with an impressive level of diversity for a first album. It contains 10 tracks (35 min, 15 sec)...

The inspiration behind this album is, I'm really hoping, real and not fabricated. According to the band, New York Howl is a ghost story, in many ways. When lead songwriter David Mosey happened upon a suitcase laying amongst a pile of garbage on the streets of NYC, something made him take it home. Inside, along with books and broken records, he found the diary. Her name, inscribed on the front cover, was Francis. Her first entry was dated June 12, 1975, and began, “So I made it to New York…” The entries continued daily, then monthly, then every year or two, according to intermittent attention. Then, in 1982 after a flurry of successive entries, the words came to an abrupt end. Her last words: “I hope he gets it.”

In these pages – between glimpses of scenes, starts and stops of poetry, dreams half-recounted – was the story of a young woman from Portland, Oregon, new to the city, who was looking, forever watching. Struck by the contrast of her prescient internal life and her harsh reality, Mosey began to dream about Francis himself. Lyrics and music soon appeared to accompany the stories in his mind. From the pulsing title track, to the bustling 'Cloud Light', and the brooding 'Make It On Our Own', the songs themselves reverberate the themes of Francis’s diary.

It's a wonderfully polished LP, which sounds more like a second album - there's a confidence and flair that normally only comes with experience. At times Cici James's vocals brought to mind Chrissy Hines (this is most obvious in the single 'Hearts').

I really enjoyed this album and I know it's one I'll be revisiting for a long time to come.

9

Nick Smithson