Review: Planes Mistaken For Stars at 3 Kings, with Fire Drills and Kingdom of Magic, 8/13/11

Aaron Thackeray. See more photos from last night.

Right before Planes took the stage, you could see the anticipation on the faces of many people who had been looking forward to this show as soon as it was announced. Most of those people were friends of these guys, because that's kind of what you became if you showed up to a gig, especially in the early days when this band often played warehouses.

Tom Murphy

Gared O'Donnell of Planes Mistaken for Stars (left) with Jed Kopp of Il Cattivo. See more photos from the Planes Mistaken for Stars reunion.

Planes wasn't kidding when it was announced this would be a reunion show. No, Jamie Drier didn't take the stage but a good chunk of the beginning of the set had Aaron Wise on bass. And it was Wise who started off the show with, "Alright, motherfuckers, here's an oldie but a goodie." Then the band erupted into "Copper and Stars."

Aaron Thackeray. See more photos from the Planes Mistaken for Stars reunion.

Planes have never been less than generous with its collective energy on stage, but hearing this classic older song and seeing the sheer passion with which the original line-up (including Matt Bellinger on guitar, Mike Ricketts on drums and, of course Gared O'Donnell on vocals and guitar) performed the song set things off with an inspirational bang. And during the break in the middle, the band paused and O'Donnell told the crowd how he missed Denver.

Aaron Thackeray

Mikey Ricketts. See more photos from the Planes Mistaken for Stars reunion.

Before "Knuckle Hungry," O'Donnel told us that he'd had a lot of "daddy issues" and that the three guys behind him helped him work through a lot of that and that so did some people in the audience. Even more so than the studio version, the harrowing "Knuckle Hungry" clearly illustrated that if this band could ever have been connected with emo, it was only in the best sense of emotional catharsis with compassion for those who suffer as you suffer the slings and arrows of a life lived not glossing over the full richness of experience.