I Am the Pilot: Crashing Into Consciousness
By
Evan Sawdey 6 July 2007PopMatters Interviews Editor
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.
Evan Sawdey began contributing to PopMatters in late 2005 after contributing for years to his college newspaper
The Knox Student. Evan became the Associate Interviews Editor for PopMatters in the summer of 2008, and then the full Interviews Editor a year after that. Since joining, Evan's work has been quoted/featured in a wide array of publications including SLUG Magazine, The Metro (U.K.), the Gulf Times, Soundvenue Magazine (Denmark), and multiple national newspapers. Evan has been a guest on WNYC's Soundcheck (an NPR affiliate), was the Executive Producer for the
Good With Words: A Tribute to Benjamin Durdle album (available for free at
GoodWithWordsAlbum.com), and wrote the liner notes for the 2011 re-release of
Andre Cymone's hit 1985 album A.C. (Big Break Records) and the 2012 re-releases of
the JoBoxers' 1983 debut album Like Gangbusters,
'Til Tuesday's 1985 debut Voices Carry, and
Plastic Bertrand's 1978 album AN 1 (all Hot Shot Records). He is a current member of The Recording Academy and resides in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow him
@SawdEye should you be so inclined.
I Am the Pilot - A Lesson Learned
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