Autopilot Off "Make a Sound" (Island Records) Sounds like: The Foo Fighters taking shots of Story of the Year and Thursday.
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Monroe, N.Y.'s Autopilot Off has been touring with only a short five-song EP under their belt. That will change tomorrow when the band's full-length major label debut, "Make a Sound," is released. It is no mistake that this is a great album all the way through and a rather thought-out move by the band. Guitarist Chris Hughes and the rest of Autopilot Off wanted the album to be solid from beginning to end.
"We didn't want to just write a great song and build it around that," Hughes said in a phone interview. "We wanted something that flows from beginning to end, something that has peaks and valleys, where you have to listen to the whole thing to appreciate it. We really hope that people will get the whole album and see what it's all about and get a feel for it and get what the album is all about and what the band is all about."
Punk rock veteran Tim Armstrong of Rancid fame helped write two songs on "Make a Sound." Although his influence can be heard on the songs, he and Autopilot Off wanted to make sure to keep Armstrong as an influence, rather than a performer.
"I think [Armstrong] wanted to keep the songs we wrote together as our identity, and he was really stoked that we did that for him and he wanted to hear our rendition of a part of his work," Hughes explained. "But we have demos that I'm sure will surface at some point, with Tim singing, [Autopilot Off singer Chris Johnson] singing, me playing guitar, Matt Freeman from Rancid on Bass and Travis Barker from blink-182 on drums. So it's kind of this wild collaboration of stuff that we recorded on Rancid's bus."
Besides the modest help of Armstrong on two tracks, the solidity and unity on the rest of "Make a Sound" could not have been accomplished without the patience and forward thinking of Autopilot Off's label, Island Records.
"The label was really cool because we were in the studio and we already had our single done so they really should have made us wrap it up and saved some money," Hughes said. "But because we were writing so much they let us stay in the studio a lot longer which is really cool to do. It really contributed to making this record what it is."
Autopilot Off touch upon many experiences in "Make a Sound" - such as getting over Sept. 11, questioning religious beliefs, being robbed at gunpoint and facing inner fears - by using interesting imagery.
"We were at a point where we had nothing, but then we wrote the song 'I Know You're Waiting' and that kind of opened up things," Hughes said. "We realized we could do things a little bit different. We could use a different style than we were used to. Chris Johnson has always been into not being very obvious. He likes imagery and metaphors and stuff like that. He gets really personal but he does so without speaking in the first person. Sometimes it hurts us because people don't really look into it as deep but in the long run most people get it and they appreciate it more."
Despite the band's outstanding use of imagery to describe events, they shy away from political stances in favor of something that everyone can relate to.
"I think our political message is a social political message," Hughes said. "It's our mantra as a band ... that if you want your life to be better, you have to be the one to change it. So that is the message we push. If you're not happy with your life, before you go blame everyone else, take a pretty hard look at your self and see why it is like that. People should make their own lives better instead of waiting for someone to do it for them"
