Yellow Plastic Band 'Above Gravity' Album Review

With similarities to the Beatles’ music, Plastic Yellow Band is a new classic rock project from Gerald Jenning.

Modeled after John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, both are influenced by the Beatles and Pink Floyd.  It is created around the compositions of a single songwriter/musician (in this case Jenning) and a core group of musicians who join the composer at any given time to help produce an electric sound to the composer’s original compositions. The Plastic Yellow Band consists of Jenning (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Joe Hurt (bass), and Karl Derrick Tesch (drums).

With music that mixes the Beatles and Pink Floyd with modern acts like Porcupine Tree and Coldplay, the emphasis is on varied tempos and multi-tracks layered with highly polished condensed productions.  Having formed the business after selling the business he had previously founded, Jenning founded ISI Studios to focus on his music production.  The studio led Jenning to focus more on songwriting, production, and on his compositions.  It led to a rare insight into the song-making process.

This focus eventually became fodder for Jenning and began to reflect in his songs.  His compositions were laced with similar singer-songwriter productions that led to Lennon’s intellectual and sensitive reputation.  Oftentimes the songs were produced simply with merely an acoustic guitar accompanying the vocals.  Others exhibit the faster paced tempo of progressive rock that is noted from their influences with Pink Floyd, while maintaining the ever subtle nuances that have made Lennon’s intellectualized and emotional quality of content renown.

In the first track “Starlight,” the 21-minute anthem is a startling jam-fest that with its highly energized guitar solos and melodious piano renditions leave a heavy impression on listeners long after the track has left them.  The lengthy track with its influential wavelengths will gather audiences with its space age themes and neat interplay of harmonies and vocals and gigantic arrays of jutting sounds to produce a heavily interlaced soundtrack to what giants can play to.

“America (Mother of Exiles)” is the opposite of that.  Shorter and with less production, the song is embedded with formulaic gestures.  More of a uniform interplay with the vocals singing in duet and playing with the melodies, there is more to the piano melodies and a touch of more movement with the electronic mode of production than in the previous tracks.

With gigantic gestures that point to heightening the bar to progressive classic rock, what Plastic Yellow Band does in Above Gravity is produce an electric sound that is both comforting and emotional.  The album does a spectacular job of impressing on listeners with the sonic detailing that could only come from a Lennon production.  With many similarities aside, what is impressive about Jenning’s work is that he is able to produce such great sounds that is equal to the intellectual and emotional depth that Lennon is known for in his work.  Be sure you give Above Gravity a listen.  It dropped in November.