Friday Pilots Club
Ladies and gentlemen, please secure all baggage underneath your seats and prepare for liftoff— Friday Pilots Club just released a new single.
The Chicago-based rock group just dropped “Breaking My Bones”, the first song from their upcoming debut EP. It’s heavy and anthemic— the perfect showcase of the band’s trademark power.
Friday Pilots Club, consisting of singer Caleb Hiltunen and instrumentalist Drew Polovick, formed around 2015 when the pair met at a party. Drew began as stand-in for a member that moved back to California, and the rest was history.
Since then, the band has played numerous shows around the states, and has released a host of singles ranging from the jazzy, soulful ballad “Would You Mind” to the funky, feel-good “PRBLM”.
Hiltunen and Polovick describe their sound as “no-nonsense, multi-dimensional exploratory alt music.” That balance between recognizability and variety lies at the core of their sound.
“We really try to stay in that exploratory world,” Polovick said. “There are those through threads in our music in Caleb’s voice, the songwriting and certain compositional techniques, but we really want to stay innovating and drawing from new sets of inspiration.”
Arguably, the biggest consistency in the duo’s songwriting is the power behind each track. Hiltunen’s lyricism and jazz-infused voice paired with Polovick’s hard-hitting production and instrumental expertise blend to create the perfect balance of influences.
Hiltunen’s goal in songwriting is to produce something beautiful and meaningful while still being approachable. He cites artists like Gregory Alan Isakov and Hozier as influences.
“He’s such a great narrative writer,” he said of Hozier. “He interacts with metaphors in a way that isn’t in your face and pretentious. Even if you don’t understand what he’s talking about, you still understand the sentiment.”
As for his vocal influences, Hiltunen references soul artists like Jeff Buckley, Conor Mason and Mavis Staples— basically anyone that truly sings from the heart.
“Mavis Staples is the perfect example of someone that’s thoroughly soulful,” he said. “She could sing ‘Baby Shark’ and it would sound like it’s the deepest thing in the world.”
Polovick pulls his instrumental inspiration from many of the same artists, but also works to combine the sounds of pop, rock and metal acts. His list of musicians is eclectic as can be, ranging from Ariana Grande to Bring Me the Horizon, but he says the common theme is a certain level of intensity behind the performance.
That common theme is what connects Friday Pilots Club’s discography. Their music is powerful, grandiose— all or nothing. The duo drove that point home in their newest single.
“Breaking My Bones”, is a bass-laden anthem for modern times. It began with a drunken stranger’s slurred monologue and a quest to recreate the feeling of standing outside of a bar with a beat echoing from the building behind you. Polovick sent an experimental sample to Hiltunen, and they ran with it.
The meaning evolved through a lengthy process of songwriting and tweaking until it landed on its current meaning. To them, it’s a commentary on social media and the hoops we jump through to conform, but it’s up for personal interpretation as well.
“It’s talking about how we contort ourselves to fit into an online environment,” Hiltunen said. “I describe it as sort of a user’s guide to validating yourself through social media in an unhealthy way, and it wraps up in the end and sort of comes back down to earth.”
Though the song was finished back in February, it’s taken on a much more central meaning in the current global climate. As coronavirus pushes us back into our homes, our interpersonal relationships are dominated more and more by online presence, and powerful movements like Black Lives Matter make our platforms more valuable than ever.
“You see influencers driving up to protests and taking photos with photographers and getting back into their car and going away,” Polovick said “As we spend more and more time online because we can’t see each other in person, we’re drawn further into that trap.”
They said the point of the song isn’t to outright criticize social media, however. The goal is to make you think about the media you’re consuming and what to trust as genuine. So much of the real story of a post is hidden, so it’s difficult to judge.
There are obvious setbacks when faced with a viral pandemic, but Friday Pilots Club has been hard at work nonetheless. The pair is already playing around with ideas for new music and hopes to tour as soon as possible. Keep an eye out for their debut EP on all streaming platforms, and follow the band on Instagram @fridaypilotsclub for more updates.