Bread Pilot

Bread Pilot today released their new song, “Droopee,” alongside an Evan House-directed video premiering via FLOOD Magazine. A slow-burn to explosion led by singer guitarist Stephen Ibanez, Jr.’s soaring vocals, the track is “the oldest song on the album,” he explains. “It was written ten years ago when I was first starting to really put my head down and try to write songs rather than rely entirely on atmospheric sounds. It started out as a guitar loop in my dorm room and the words reflect on desperately grasping at anything that will provide me comfort or make me feel loved, even if I know that it’s fleeting. Flailing through the first few years of adulthood.” “Droopee” is the third and final advance single from the Seattle-based four-piece’s forthcoming album, New To You, following the fuzzed-out, hook-laden “Skin Day” and the sinuous “Eye Listening.” Due out May 27th via Double Double Whammy, the album is now available for pre-order.

Bread Pilot will celebrate New To You with a hometown record release show at Seattle’s Sunset Tavern on May 28th. A current itinerary is below and more dates will be announced soon.

New To You charts a decade of memorable places and momentous occasions, while exploring life’s most intimate emotions through detailed and dynamic arrangements. Bread Pilot — Ibanez, Jr. (guitar/vocals), Taylor Hayden (guitar/vocals), and House (drums) — met and began performing together in high school in Southbury, CT, and the album is a combination of songs that came out of years of writing and touring, and new ones crafted after the band (which now features Levi Nattrass on bass) relocated to Seattle, WA. The songs on New To You are pins on a map, sonic encapsulations of the distinct thrill of new places and the mundanity of familiar ones.

Allured by the grandeur and nature of the Pacific Northwest, the band made the cross-country move together, and with their shared mutual admiration for The Microphones, were eager to record at The Unknown, an old Catholic church-turned cozy recording studio in Anacortes, Washington, where Phil Elverum brought his personal, intimate, and wrenching songs to life. The band worked tirelessly with producer/engineer Samuel Rosson (Great Grandpa, Death Cab for Cutie) to distill a decade’s worth of material into something new, and the studio’s backdrop — surrounded by panoramic views of nature, parks, and quiet small-town life, reminiscent of the band’s youth in Southbury — made it easy to connect and record songs so rich with atmosphere and personal significance. Tracks like “Crook” and “Plat” are named after suburban landmarks from their early days: Crook Horn Road, where Hayden hosted basement shows in high school, and Platt Park, where the band often escaped to for some shared peace. Even the title, New To You, alludes to Hayden’s grandmother’s antique consignment shop, a permanent etching in his mind. 

“The intimacy and vulnerability of these songs is something we were maybe a little scared to go fully fledged into in the past,” Ibanez recalls. “They feel really close because they are a time capsule of us as a band before our move. I had some of my first truly euphoric experiences alone at Platt Park, feeling at peace and connected to the earth.” Though Ibanez and Hayden brought new levels of introspection and solitude to their songwriting, Bread Pilot’s ten years of chemistry and companionship radiate from their performance, their gentle and earnest harmonies reveal years of deep friendship and connection. 

New To You stands not only as Bread Pilot’s official debut, but as a testament to how far the band can push itself to reach its full potential — a blend of songs that are poppy and catchy, but non-traditional and non-linear. The album’s softness and tenderness are juxtaposed with emotion too strong to hold back, and too intense to be hushed. Packing 10 years of life experiences and influences into one album, Bread Pilot put their own twist on what it means to make undefinable pop songs. New To You may be steeped in seclusion and introspection, but never enough to detract from the deeper purpose of finding beauty in despair.