Stream: Fiction Plane, ‘Where Do We Go From Here’

Kevin Bronson on November 29th, 2015

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Fiction Plane, the sometimes-L.A.-based rock trio fronted by Joe Sumner, this month returned with its first album in more than five years, “Mondo Lumina.” It’s been 12 long years since the band declared “Everything Will Never Be OK” (the title of its debut), but on this collection of muscular, radio-ready alt-rockers, it sounds like everything will. Sumner sounds less like his father, Sting, than on the trio’s previous outings, but sings with no less gravitas — “Where Do We Go From Here” seems to have sprung from rock’s always-busy anthem factory, and “Don’t Give Up the Fight” punctuates its tender rallying cry with shouts. Singer-bassist Sumner and mates Seton Daunt (guitar) and Pete Wilhoit (drums) made the record, which came out Nov. 13 via Rhyme & Reason Records, at Henson Recording studios with producer/engineer Tom Syrowski (Chris Cornell, Zac Brown Band, Incubus). If not groundbreaking sonically, “Mondo Lumina” at least reveals a mature, somewhat optimistic perspective; the young Sumner can never escape his father’s shadow, but as he sings in “In My Shoes” he seems to have fond a comfortable place to roam.

||| Stream: “Where Do We Go From Here” and “Don’t Give Up the Fight”