My Pilot‘s Hot Blood EP gets a once over from Dara Higgins
Hot Blood is the second ep release from Dublin based, Antrim native My Pilot, 6 tracks released on his own Less Deceived Records.
It starts with Innocent Grace, a story about some kind of voyeurism. You gotta admire a three chord song that goes on for seven minutes, plodding along, almost unchangingly. Reminiscent of Gomez back when people were aware of them, or perhaps a somnambulant Beck, with vocals that lean toward the David Kitt end of things. Kittser, one must remember, sold 20,000 copies of The Big Romance in Ireland alone, way back when (10 years ago, in fact) in a mainstream-indie crossover. With that kind of nationwide coverage, it must be the case that’s he’s become influential to newer acts, particularly with the bedroom recordist, but whether the act in question even realise it is a different thing. I doubt it’s a conscious nod in this case.
Stuck in Carlow, aside from having the best song nomenclature I’ve come across in a while, is brevity itself by comparison. All that needs to be said done in a minute and a half. This is tight songwriting, the direction that My Pilot should probably invest their time in, rather than the title track, with a tinny, insistent snare, and a cop chase guitar figure that seems to miss the point.
Reduction Zone is kind of downbeat country, with plaintive slide guitar in the background. A lot of what is interesting about this band is occurring just under the surface. Angular notes, strange sounds on the periphery of the music, the aforementioned spectral guitar slides. They should probably refrain from mentioning the phrase “hard liquor“. If you are not Faron Young or George Jones it creates an artifice, which mars the tune.
There’s a decent song trying to get out of Descendants, but again the beats create a problem, dragging the tune toward a rough, demo feel, when it’s clearly aching to go in some kind of Big Wreck direction. Excellent guitar work creates a web around the words, as it does on most on the record, and the playing there cannot be faulted. If some of these tunes were recorded with the nuance and accents of a proper rhythm section, they could take off, as it is they’re ensnared in the non existent dynamic of the drum machine.
For now My Pilot have a lot of potential, people have gone further on less, but they’ve yet to realise it fully. Lose the drum machine, get in a proper stickman, who, we know, are usually a pain in the arse, but would definitely help some of these songs escape their earthly bounds. Overall, the sense is of a superior demo tape, rather than a commercial release. It could be best used for a recruitment drive.
