Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Portland natives Ryan Dobrowski and Israel Nebeke make up the super new band, Blind Pilot.  And let me just say, the band’s debut album 3 Rounds and a Sound, is the best new indie folk music that I’ve heard in a long time.

As cheesy as it sounds, I have to say it… if you only buy one album this summer, make it 3 Rounds and a Sound.  Blind Pilot’s music is the type that captures you immediately and compels you to run up and down the streets boasting about this amazing music that you have discovered.  So let this band be your ticket to year-long bragging rights, because this overwhelmingly cool music is sure to make you cooler too.

Striking while the iron is hot for folky acoustic style music, Blind Pilot has come up with a 12-tracked album where every song feels like falling in love.  And here’s the real mind blower, not only does this 2-man band really go to town with their amazing nine piece instrumental set up, but the lyrics this band is dishing out are startlingly good. 

Tracks like Oviedo and The Story I Heard are the type that put emphasis on the lyrics while lulling you into submission with the very subtle but still incredible background music. In the album’s eighth track I Buried a Bone, the band comes at you from behind with bursts of trumpet in an otherwise softening song about waiting for love. And right on queue, Blind Pilot closes their album with 3 Rounds and a Sound, a reflective song that softly sings…

I was swimming,
My eyes were dark ‘til you woke me,
And told me that opening is just the start.
It was.
Now I see you,
‘Til kingdom come, you’re the one I want
To see me for all the stupid shit I’ve done.

The thought that will inevitably come to mind after listening to this album is, “Hmm, this band sounds like…(insert band name here)” Because they do.  Blind Pilot sounds a lot like a lot of other bands; Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, Jens Lekman, and Snow Patrol, just to name a few.  But unlike other copy-cat bands, Blind Pilot takes the best parts of all your favorite indie groups and combines them to make something new and good.  And while you may find yourself comparing them to other bands, Blind Pilot has created an original sound that reserves them a spot at the top of the music industry today.  Every track on 3 Rounds and a Sound is excellent and this is music that I recommend everyone pick up immediately, if not sooner.