Doing pilates

Pilate was one of the bands that rotated on my Pandora playlist (back when they were still available to listeners across the globe), which I had marked as a favourite. I just loved the way Todd Clark, the lead, carried the vocals at the bridge like a fragile glass: “Please don’t you ask / Please don’t you ask me how it feels / She was the last / To light up my night and make me sing”. And then floated over so seamlessly to Chris Greenough’s guitar solo that was not too heavy nor too little for a climatic peak of the song.

It was a perfect moment in the song to close your eyes, have your emotions drink in the feel of the music and come undone with the solo, like a box of confetti bursting in the middle of a clean white room.

Upon listening to their debut album Caught by the Window, I learned to get used to the lightness of the band. They sauntered across their album quite alike to a bunch of lazy bums: Keeley’s lazy strokes on the snare, Clark’s vocal slurs that drag, Greenough and Bumrah’s riffs that, try as they may, could not really hit it properly when they do fast tracks like Perfect Thrill, Into Your Hideout and Overrated.

With this, it contributed a lot to making their ballads shine and choked with emotions, especially the abovementioned song, Alright and The Travel Song. Also the fact that they had the album perfectly wrapped with Endgame and A Reprise;  from a meticulous wrapping with scotch tapes, and a carefully selected ribbon of the right length securing the package.

Pilate has since changed their band name to Pilot Speed and adapted a heavier outlook for their music in Self Control for Life’s Speed and Wooden Bones. I still prefer how they started off.

Download another nice song from their debut album, Alright, HERE.