Passengers, Pilots, Stewards | People In Planes could really mean anybody...
August 7 (9pm). The Pawn Shop (10551-82 Ave, upstairs). Tickets: $10.29, available at the door or through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca).
Albums are always being pushed back. Rarely is the first announced release date the one that sticks, especially in today’s floundering musical landscape. These days, add about four to six months to a projected release date to get a more realistic idea of when a new album will arrive in stores.
Case in point: People in Planes’ sophomore disc, Beyond the Horizon, was initially supposed to come out sometime this spring. Then it got held back in favour of a vague “summer” arrival, a timeframe the band’s website still wishfully clings to. This time, the quintet from Cardiff, Wales hopes September 9 will be the magic day—or so says Pete Roberts, who handles lead guitar and backing vocals for the band.
“We’ve been through a lot of labels, and we still don’t know how it works,” Roberts admits. “It’s the sort of thing you try to steer clear of and just try to accept. We have an amazing label at the moment [New York-based Wind-up Records], but all labels are the same when it comes to setbacks and release dates being moved.”
The fact that PIP spent two years putting Beyond the Horizon together only adds to the frustration. “It was a long, fragmented process,” Roberts says. “After we finished touring midway through 2006, we went back to Wales and starting writing. We officially started recording in April of last year, but working with four different producers in six studios takes time. We finished recording late last year, and the album was finally finished being mixed and mastered in February, which was a big relief.”
There’s a Canadian connection to Beyond the Horizon too—one of the four producers who worked on the album was none other than Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida, who worked with People in Planes at his Los Angeles studio. When Maida isn’t touring with OLP or attempting to rap, he’s built a rep for himself as a producer, having helmed tracks for everyone from Hilary Duff to Canadian Idol runner-up Rex Goudie. Maida contributed three songs to Beyond the Horizon.
“We were looking for producers who really responded to our demos,” says Roberts. “We wanted to work with people who were really excited about the material. Raine was an old friend of a guy at our label, so our tape naturally went to him. When he first spoke to us, he told us he had picked up our first record when he was on the road and that he was already a fan of the band. That immediately made us think that he would be up for working hard on something for us, and we ended cranking out some real good tunes with him, I think.”
Their upcoming date at the Pawn Shop comes towards the end of their second Canadian tour, and Roberts says the band has enjoyed their time in the great white north.
“I’m not sure if the fact we’re British is some precursor to the good vibes we get when we’re in Canada, but we’ve always felt welcomed when we’re here,” he says. “It was weird, our first time here, having people come and randomly start conversations with you about the weather. Or whether we’re tourists, once they hear our accents. They always think we’re tourists.”
