I Am the Pilot: Crashing Into Consciousness

The emo that sells the most is the emo that the public can relate to. Be it Gerard Way’s morbid cabaret that he displays with My Chemical Romance or Geoff Rickly’s megaphone confessions that are the basis of Thursday, the populace connects because they know what the singer’s going through, or at least can pretend to know. That point of relation is missing from a lot of other bands — you know, the kind that sounds just like everyone else? I Am the Pilot are one of those bands. Their debut, Crashing Into Consciousness, is mindless, faceless melodicism. At times they sound like emo underdogs Tokyo Rose, but at least that band can mix up tempos and instrumentation with grace. I Am the Pilot have a one-note sensibility, where at the end of the day, you can barely distinguish “Warriors” from “Ninety-Five”. They may be the pilots, but the plane is doing nothing but crashing.