Phantom Planet’s 1998 debut album is titled Phantom Planet Is Missing and as a band on a nearly decade long hiatus, they largely have been missing since 2009. Sure all the band members have kept busy with their respective projects but as a core, they weren’t making new music or touring. That’s all changed recently though with the release of a handful of new singles and a new album due late 2019 / early 2020.
The four-piece has played a handful of shows since announcing a full reformation in early 2019, but no trip to the East Coast was mixed into the first batch until now, when they visited Elsewhere in Brooklyn, NY on 9/18/19. It had been 11 years since they played a show in New York City according to a fan in the front row who chimed in when lead singer Alex Greenwald began asking the last time they had been in NY.
In that 11 year span, the band’s power-pop and alt-rock sound seems to have become even more relevant than it was in their early-aughts heyday when their song “California”, which became the theme song for the TV series The O.C. was a radio staple and the band still featured actor Jason Schwartzman on drums before his 2003 departure.
Their set at Elsewhere brought a number of fan favorites back to the NYC stage, as well as new singles “Balisong” and the first live performance of “Party Animal”, also included was a new song titled “Love Letter to a Dead End Street” from the forthcoming album as the first song of the encore.
