One Little Plane - 'Until'
In music journalistic parlance, the phrase ‘soundtrack for the summer’ gets bandied around an awful lot. Rarely however does a summer release actually have anything to do with summer, or the frenzy of activity that erupts for a few short months (in the case of the UK, weeks) before the weather locks down once more. With ‘Until’, Kathryn Bint, the waiflike powerhouse behind One Little Plane, has crafted not just a wonderfully hypnotic debut, but an exemplary homage to the beauty of a sunlit world.
Take opener ‘Rise’ for example which abounds with images of solar adoration, its joyful confidence setting the tone of delicate optimism, or ‘Summer Stream’, Bint’s sweet voice accompanied by a gently rippling electric guitar. This isn’t to say that Bint isn’t averse to delving back into the darkness, songs such as ‘Nobody Out There’ with its stripped down arrangement and repetitive acoustic guitar being reminiscent of Cat Power circa ‘What Would The Community Think?’
One Little Plane however prefers to fly in the light, carried along by Bint’s endearingly sweet vocals. Indeed, there’s something wispy about her voice, a fragile wetness that makes it seem as though her words are liable to be blown away, that is utterly beguiling. It’s almost as though she stepped out of a Richard Dadd painting. Her lyrics are similarly captivating, as capable of sketching almost otherworldly pastoral idylls as pitilessly dissecting past love, ‘[you] thought I could give you everything, but all I had was me’, on ‘Long Time Ago’.
‘Until’ was recorded during 2005 in Bint’s London flat with the aid of Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) as producer. Although not everything on the album works, the irritating multi-tracked vocals on ‘Lotus Flower’ being the most obvious example, Bint is generally well supported by a shiny mix of, among other things, thumb piano, vibraphone and various small percussion.
Those looking for something with a bit of bounce to accompany the remaining two months of sunshine will no doubt be disappointed. For everyone else, check out the bright-eyed pixy piloting One Little Plane and be quietly transported out of the gloom and into the sunsoaked greenery.