Artist: Stolen Airplane

Artist: Stolen Airplane

Links: https://www.facebook.com/StolenAirplaneBand

http://www.reverbnation.com/stolenairplane/songs

Stolen Airplane's newest EP features intricate guitar patterns; knock-down, drag-out drumming; and the lyric, "How can you sleep at night?" ("Innocence"). Well, Stolen Airplane, with all your feral yelling and guitar wailing, I really can't! But why sleep when this rocks so hard.

Each of the EP's tracks unfold with the rock essentials firmly in grasp: high-caliber fretting and drumming, both of which add color and shape. This is a band that builds slowly towards crescendo, instead of bashing it out early and often. And since they opt to let dynamism affect their listeners, let it be said that the men of Stolen Airplane never shoot their wads too early.

Now for me, Stolen Airplane works better as the song than the band name. Songs provide context that, here, let us know we're talking about small planes. Otherwise, large planes are still in the mix, and so the thoughts conjured by the no-context band name: I hear of stolen cars but not stolen airplanes; who steals airplanes; oh yeah, terrorists.

Setting that aside, fleshed out with song lyrics, a stolen airplane works wonderfully as a metaphor for human desperation. Before reading the lyrics of "Stolen Airplane," it struck me that a two-seat airplane, stolen, would perfectly parallel a new romance. Your life was devoid of romance (or transportation or the adventure of theft); but now that you have it (in the air), you don't really know what you have (does it have enough fuel) and you're petrified it'll end badly (fall out of sky; shot down by a third party; or with pissed-off people waiting for you on the tarmac).

The actual meaning of this song seems to be closer to the desperate condition of someone suffering a terminal illness: "When you said that you were done with waiting rooms / Done with shaking hands with your own doom / We were pretty sure it wouldn’t last, wouldn’t last, fading fast / If we can start this stolen airplane / I’ll get you back before they know we’re gone." The final line further proves the suitability of the symbol: there are practical consequences to escapism, whether the escape is romance, evading treatment, or stealing airplanes.

The standout track has to be "Hero." We hear a relatively speedy churning guitar part that's selectively employed to great effect throughout the song. It would be good enough alone, but we also get an angular riff that provides a capable complement, as well as drumming that is, as always, varied and special. The reason "Hero" stands out to my ears is that the band seems to be invigorated by this, a song that's uniformly uptempo (rather than a steady build), and because the vocal is so sneeringly punk.

Stolen Airplane is showing off their chops on this EP. It's a diversity of song-writing that proves they're more than a one-trick pony. But a pony needs that one trick to make the kids' party circuit. Stolen Airplane's trick is exemplified by "Hero." (That is, unless their trick is crafting suitable metaphors no one else has thought of, because that's a pretty good trick too.)

*** The author of this review, Chris Sullivan, plays the pakhavaj for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8