Review: Blind Pilot
By Albert Aspinall
Monday 2nd November 2009
Monday 2nd November 2009
Israel Nebeker (vocals/guitar) and Ryan Dobrowski (drums), the cardinal of the acoustic indie folk-rock duo Blind pilot, undertook both their less than conventional tours of America solely on bicycles. Along the first of these tours, cycling from West Coast small town to small town, playing gigs along the way, before they had reached the halfway point the band exhausted the ample supply of Ep’s they had brought from hometown Portland, and ached to return to record their debut. In this way 3 Rounds and a Sound was born.
The fiercely environmental hippie esq vibe reverberates throughout each track of 3 Rounds which was showcased through Portland, from Bellingham to Seattle and Olympia before Blind Pilot finally found themselves in San Diego. The tour alone gained them a plethora of fans and was deemed an overall success despite having both their bikes stolen outside the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, ( Dobrowski found his later for sale and paid $50 for the return of his own bike, while Nebeker’s was never recovered)
The band was helped along their tour by an vigorous instrumental line-up, with 4 other musicians playing a variety of 9 different instruments, All of whom toured alongside Blind Pilot on their American tours, and meeting with the bands eco-friendly nature, were all on bikes. This new age tour defied the blueprints of the classic American Road trip, a laid back chauffeur driven tour in a million dollar air conditioned, stretched bus adorned with the newest of technology and accompanied by a dozen roadies, managers, executives and body guards. All of which was absent.
When listening, many could remark on the familiarity of 3 Rounds to a superfluous number of other bands, from Death Cab, Elliott Smith, Modest mouse, Snow patrol, the list goes on. And despite the same-ish feeling of the tracks there is something unusual and different about this album.
After a mention in the iTunes best of 2008 indie spotlight (a collection of 20 indie music tracks of the newest and freshest up and coming musicians) their bicycle tour and releasing their debut, the duo’s tunes found their way to the ears of Adam Duritz, lead singer and frontman to Counting Crow. After a first listening, Duritz called the band and asked them to accompany him on tour and to support his band for the duration, an honour and opportunity they immediately accepted.
The damaged, heartbroken lyrics sculpted by the duo and then wrung out in gravel tones of Nebreker through songs like “Oviedo” a confession of vulnerability, are contrasted entirely with mellow worn down tones of “3 Rounds and a Sound”
From these shy, retiring musicians with scrawled words on scraps of paper detailing another sole destroying ode to honesty, displays their evident unassuming temperament, from behind modest eyes that never manage to hold contact for more than a brief second.
From the start its immediately captivating creating a realisation that this band actually has something different, finally, from an already satiated mundane indie folk scene but there were times when listening to 3 Rounds that I find myself skipping through a majority of the album, trying to find the sound I was looking for but never arriving on it. The fear was that I would fall out of favor with this band as quickly as I had fallen for them in the first place, and there status would be reduced to another CD I own but never got round to listening to.
So I’m not entirely sure how to judge this album, definitely worth checking out, perhaps even owning, but whether this band is due for world wide accreditation is yet to be seen.
I’ve never been a fan of Public Displays of Affection, which is one reason why I don’t like tree huggers, but in the case of Blind Pilot, I’m willing to make an exception.
The fiercely environmental hippie esq vibe reverberates throughout each track of 3 Rounds which was showcased through Portland, from Bellingham to Seattle and Olympia before Blind Pilot finally found themselves in San Diego. The tour alone gained them a plethora of fans and was deemed an overall success despite having both their bikes stolen outside the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, ( Dobrowski found his later for sale and paid $50 for the return of his own bike, while Nebeker’s was never recovered)
The band was helped along their tour by an vigorous instrumental line-up, with 4 other musicians playing a variety of 9 different instruments, All of whom toured alongside Blind Pilot on their American tours, and meeting with the bands eco-friendly nature, were all on bikes. This new age tour defied the blueprints of the classic American Road trip, a laid back chauffeur driven tour in a million dollar air conditioned, stretched bus adorned with the newest of technology and accompanied by a dozen roadies, managers, executives and body guards. All of which was absent.
When listening, many could remark on the familiarity of 3 Rounds to a superfluous number of other bands, from Death Cab, Elliott Smith, Modest mouse, Snow patrol, the list goes on. And despite the same-ish feeling of the tracks there is something unusual and different about this album.
After a mention in the iTunes best of 2008 indie spotlight (a collection of 20 indie music tracks of the newest and freshest up and coming musicians) their bicycle tour and releasing their debut, the duo’s tunes found their way to the ears of Adam Duritz, lead singer and frontman to Counting Crow. After a first listening, Duritz called the band and asked them to accompany him on tour and to support his band for the duration, an honour and opportunity they immediately accepted.
The damaged, heartbroken lyrics sculpted by the duo and then wrung out in gravel tones of Nebreker through songs like “Oviedo” a confession of vulnerability, are contrasted entirely with mellow worn down tones of “3 Rounds and a Sound”
From these shy, retiring musicians with scrawled words on scraps of paper detailing another sole destroying ode to honesty, displays their evident unassuming temperament, from behind modest eyes that never manage to hold contact for more than a brief second.
From the start its immediately captivating creating a realisation that this band actually has something different, finally, from an already satiated mundane indie folk scene but there were times when listening to 3 Rounds that I find myself skipping through a majority of the album, trying to find the sound I was looking for but never arriving on it. The fear was that I would fall out of favor with this band as quickly as I had fallen for them in the first place, and there status would be reduced to another CD I own but never got round to listening to.
So I’m not entirely sure how to judge this album, definitely worth checking out, perhaps even owning, but whether this band is due for world wide accreditation is yet to be seen.
I’ve never been a fan of Public Displays of Affection, which is one reason why I don’t like tree huggers, but in the case of Blind Pilot, I’m willing to make an exception.