Blind Pilot

To warm up for their tour supporting their debut album 3 Rounds and a Sound, Oregon based Blind Pilot pedaled around the Pacific Northwest from town to town on bicycles, scaled down gig gear in tow. It’s a novel idea, conscious and progressive, not unlike the band itself. Blind Pilot sounds like a soulful, pensive Jack Johnson with a lot of quirky retro instrumental accompaniment.

College friends Israel Nebeker (vocals, guitar, bass) and Ryan Dobrowski (drums, percussion) are the core of the band, supported by half a dozen players of various instruments such as dulcimer, banjo, vibraphone, trumpet, and Rhodes piano (on old school electric piano). With an upbeat tenor Nebeker sings abstract, verbose middlebrow lyrics that flirt with relevance but never quite manage to get beyond that stage.

More on the lyrics, does it matter that they are sometimes fatally effusive and confusing? Sure it is possible that a listener just doesn’t ‘get it.’ A lot of things are possible, but it certainly sounds as if some of Nebeker’s bon mots were made by a random simile and metaphor generator program that he downloaded onto his MacBook.

Not that the lyrical content matters that much. Nebeker’s voice is a strong enough to carry the tracks through questionable verbage, and Dobrowski knows exactly when to fill and when to be silent with his percussion. The duo aren’t fussy about the small stuff, and know how to keep a track sounding mellow but pushing forward at the same time. Less remarkable is Nebeker’s guitar strumming. It’s not bad at all, it’s just there, like the right fielder on a little league baseball team. He’s not good enough to play shortstop, but he’s not the worst kid on the team, and he can hit pretty well, so the coaches stick him out in where he can’t do any harm. Blind Pilot works best when the strumming chords are not the centerpiece.

“Oviedo” starts the album. It begins as a typical singer/songwriter guitar strummer with drums, banjo and others coming in later. Oviedo is a province in Spain, but the Nebeker never really touches on that aspect, instead he sings about wandering home “Saying your name” and “If my eyes were on my back I know what I’d be looking at through every shade of browns and greens. I didn’t know it was nothing new. I didn’t know it was you.” The lyrics hint at…well…a lot of things. It could be a love interest or it could be a metaphor for the climate crisis with “you” being the polluting corporations. Just go with it.

“I Buried a Bone” could be written from the perspective of Nebeker’s dog, or it could be about a serial killer, but either way the Mexican sounding horns recall “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. “The Story I Heard” “Paint or Pollen” and “One Red Thread” are more uptempo with subtle pace changes. “Go On Say It” is percussion dominated with many strings emerging to the front on the refrain. “Two Towns From Me” has a definite country influence; if the keyboard was a steel guitar it could be a Hank Williams song.

Overall 3 Rounds and a Sound holds a geographic feel throughout which recalls the laid back environs of the mountainous regions of the Pacific Northwest that Nebeker and Dobrowski traveled on their bicycle tour. It’s relaxing, warm and generally upbeat but not superficial with hints of non-threatening eccentricity. A fitting identity for the duo that created it.

Highlight Track: “The Story I Heard”

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