Britain’s Blue Aeroplanes Get Off the Ground at Last : Music: The 8-year-old band has moved beyond its U.S. cult following to become the darling of alternative radio stations.

Gerard Langley, the founder of and chief songwriter for the Blue Aeroplanes, said he finds a lot of current music “pretty boring.” But he believes things are changing.

The Aeroplanes, who play Bogart’s in Long Beach tonight, are Englishmen who conjure up the likes of Bob Dylan, the Sisters of Mercy and Dire Straits, even traces of British folk rock a la Fairport Convention. With three guitarists--Rodney Allen, Angelo Bruschini and 18-year-old whiz Alex Lee--the band is able to provide multiple layers of texture.

“We’ve been doing this kind of music all along,” said Langley, whose distinctive sung/spoken vocals are another of the band’s trademarks. “But people in England were more into novelty and noise, until recently, and now what we do has suddenly become acceptable. I really think it’s a case of us having waited around long enough to become fashionable.”

Indeed, with the release of “Swagger,” the 8-year-old band’s first album for a major label, the Aeroplanes have finally moved beyond their cult following in the United States and are becoming the darlings of college radio and other alternative stations. The album was produced by Gil Norton, who did the Pixies’ breakthrough, “Doolittle.”

R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, a fan of the band since 1985, has been an ally, contributing vocals to one track on “Swagger” and requesting that the Aeroplanes open for R.E.M. during its British tour.

The Blue Aeroplanes started out as a vehicle for Langley’s poetry, which he would read to the accompaniment of his brother John’s drums and his and Bruschini’s guitars. Soon, though, he found that poetry “was a limited forum” and started placing more emphasis on the music.

About 20 musicians came and went over the years before things stabilized with the current lineup, which still finds John Langley on drums and also includes bassist Andy McCreeth and free-form dancer Wojtek Dmochowski.

“This lineup wasn’t necessarily intended to last a long time,” Gerard Langley said. “But it became a proper band very quickly. In the previous lineups, everyone was always a bit undecided about whether he wanted to be in a band or whether he wanted to have a proper job.”

In the midst of the Aeroplanes’ second American tour this year (the first was with the Church), Langley said he’s finding that the group is adaptable to any size venue.

“Our sets go from loud, thrashy stuff to quiet acoustic stuff to things that build and swell,” he said. “That sort of thing seems to be rare in rock music at the moment, but it’s something that’s quite natural to us. We’re the sort of band that can tour in smoky rock ‘n’ roll clubs or large venues, then turn around and quite comfortably play in an art gallery.”

The Blue Aeroplanes and the Jazz Butcher play tonight at 9:30 at Bogart’s, 6288 Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. Tickets: $13.50. Information: (213) 594-8975.