Listen to PILOT TO GUNNER
I should have taken my own advice here. Because despite falling completely in love with Pilot to Gunner’s debut album, the excellent ‘Games at High Speeds’, when it was released at the turn of the century, I somehow swerved pretty much every update about the New York quartet since.
Ok, so at some point I found out they released a second record because 2004’s ‘Get Saved’ is in my CD collection, but I had no idea a third, ‘Guilty Guilty’ even existed.
I won’t make the same mistake again.
Fast forward to today and, as well as highlighting my utter failure to keep either ear on the ground, I’m compelled to share Pilot to Gunner’s new song, their first in a decade. ‘Drop the Sun’ is two minutes of clever, catchy punk-influenced indie rock, the kind that has always made my heart beat faster. It’s reminiscent of what they’ve done before but blessed with a new, widescreen kinda feel- it will sound at home being thrashed about in sweaty clubs but is equipped with enough jet fuel energy and shout-along lyrics to make your car radio sound better, blasting on a sunny summer sunday afternoon. It’s also the first taster of album number four, ‘Hail Hallucinator’, out next month.
In the band’s much more succinct own words, “First single off the shit-hot new one. When that comes out it’s gonna be 10 rippers in like 30 minutes. That’s nuts”
I got the update now. And I’m never missing another one.
For fans of The Jazz June, The Jealous Sound and pretty much anything J Robbins has done (which includes producing three Pilot to Gunner albums).