The Great Depression
Unconscious Pilot
Princess
Unconscious Pilot is an album that works best in a specific time and place: early, bleary-eyed mornings. The majority of the disc takes tropes from ’90s shoegaze and applies the aesthetic to alt. country Americana. “The Baltic Sea” and “Two is Fine” are prime examples of this. Both songs plow through layers of dust rather than oceanic waves of guitar. The throwbacks to ’70s AM country rock, “The Sargasso Sea” and “Advents,” showcase a more uplifting side of the band and are replete with bouncy guitar strums and epic brass hooks. The album’s centerpiece, “Meet the Hapsburgs,” is as good a slice of post-country as I’ve heard this year.
The band wouldn’t be true to their name if they didn’t disappoint at least a little bit, and “Violent Goodbyes” sounds like a not-so-subtle attempt at getting some college radio airplay … five years too late. Seriously, its Train-meets-Our-Lady-Peace vibe borders on unbearable. The follow-up song, “Andel pro Alcye,” a piano solo, is nice but is too concert hall for the rest of the barroom stock on the disc. Overall, The Great Depression have a decent, if somewhat middling album on their hands: nice for a moment, but certainly not deep enough to leave much of an impression.
Princess Records: http://www.princessrecords.com
