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With my eyes closed, I can picture exactly where this music is coming from in my memory.  It's 2:00 p.m. on a sunny Saturday afternoon and my roommate and I have just had a couple of beers with our lunch/breakfast.  It's Autumn, and a yellow crunch of leaves sounds stonily as white noise against the psychadelic drumbeat of our feet, our heads full of haze.  The sun is bright in the too-blue sky and hot on our sweatered shoulders as we walk to The Point (reader, remember: I am an ATL ex-pat) for the afternoon show featuring a line-up of local and touring indie bands.

It's 1996 - before "Indie" went the way of "Alternative" -- before 88.5 had begun to favor a mostly dance and drone format and long before WREK played anything remotely resembling melodic music. Scrawl, Spent, Tsunami, Licorice... these were the soundtrack to many an afternoon in my Little Five Points life.Their nostalgic, sun-hazed music is an homage to what indie-rock lost along the way -- honesty.

But as I am listening to this, it's actually 2009 - nearly 2010 - and I'm in Birmingham, Alabama.  It's a December cold and grey outside and at this hour, Bottletree hasn't even started serving up lunch.  I woke up this morning at 5:15 a.m.  And, for the record, I don't think I've had beer with breakfast in years -- at the very least, since my last trip to New Orleans. 

Imaginary Planes formed in Autumn of 2007.  The sound is laden with sleepy boy-girl vocals, organ fills, and lushly distorted, warm and fuzzy reverby guitars, gliding saliently over elegant drum lines dotted with tasteful rolls and cymbal treatments.   The group evokes all of those bands I mention above, yet there's something else lurking inside of each song that is uniquely IP's own. 

Songwriting for IP is a largely collective process.  Members Wes and Chris present the other three members with their song ideas and sketches, getting a feel for what the rest may want to work on next.  From there, the songs are taken to rehearsal where they are fleshed out and finished by the band as a whole.  All members have day jobs, but hope to tour as soon as time will allow.  This album will be their second official release on local label Lathelight Ltd.  

Another band full of our characteristic Birminghamian looking backward and forward at once, Imaginary Planes had me thoroughly convinced, in the best way possible, that I still had a desk job at Ichiban Records, that bands like Helium and Pavement were the stars of the college radio waves, and that Magnet Magazine had only yesterday emerged as the tastemaker seachanger of thrift-store fashionistas everywhere.  Yet there's something of the future, something out on the horizon, just over that little hill that I can't quite put my finger on.  Their nostalgic, sun-hazed music is a an homage to what indie-rock lost along the way -- honesty.

Imaginary Planes' release of their new album Into the Great Divide will be celebrated at Bottletree on Thursday, December 10th at 8:00 p.m.  Appearing also that night will be Birmingham favorites Ferocious Bubbles and Sunny So Brite. 

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