IDIOT PILOT
Wolves
(Reprise)
**

Idiot Pilot has only one trick: Nearly every song on Wolves starts with dreamy, fluid melodies, then climaxes with bursts of starry, distorted guitar and laptop flourishes. Singer Michael Harris’s Bends-era Thom Yorke croon is offset by Daniel Anderson’s guitar thrashing and occasional screams—then it repeats.

It’s not a bad trick, but it’s the same one the Bellingham band’s been pushing since their 2004 Click Pop debut, . That album was impressive enough an effort that within months, the duo were swept up and signed to major label Reprise, who re-released the full-length and started marketing the band to fans of the Used and 30 Seconds to Mars.

That was in the summer of 2006, though. For whatever reason, Wolves’ release date kept getting pushed back, causing the band to lose any momentum they gained—Wolves would have to be a hell of an effort to catapult the band back to where they once were (a promising buzz-band grabbing the attention of a number of ears in the music industry).

For follow-up, Idiot Pilot recorded with iconic producer Ross Robinson (the Cure, Blood Brothers, At the Drive-In) and Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus. Blink bandmate Travis Barker even stopped by to beef up Idiot Pilot’s drum machines with some live drum tracks, as did Coheed and Cambria’s Chris Pennie (who’s also played with Dillinger Escape Plan).

The production is spotless—Robinson makes Idiot Pilot’s layers of ethereal noise huge without sounding muddy or too heavy—but the songs are exhausting, the same mellow river swelling and breaking into tumultuous noise over and over again. Only the symphonic seven-minute closer “Recurring Dream” (with gorgeous strings) doesn’t follow the band’s well-established formula.

But in the plus column, aside from having Robinson’s talent on their side, their formulaic approach is still confident and dramatic. Sure, it’s shallow drama, but that’s all it takes to capture the attention of their new demographic which is heavily eye-lined kids looking for something that both screams and shines.

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