Adelaide’s Life Pilot have spent the past 13 years building their reputation for chaotic, energetic and unpredictable extremity in the vein of ETID, the Chariot and Converge. Now ensconsed in a tour to support their new album Self-Titled, we caught up with bassist Nick Edwards.
L: In big news for Life Pilot, you have an amazing new recording for us now.
Nicolas Evans: Yes. Unfortunately for some people, we’re still writing music. We have a lot of fun just hanging out together and writing. We still enjoy it, so we’ll just keep doing it.
L: Well what other reason is there to keep doing it? You’re probably only getting 2 cents per every 10 thousand downloads, or something, so you might as well enjoy it.
NE: I think the goal in the band is to accumulate as much crippling debt as possible. I think this will go well into our 60s and 70s.
L: That’s a goal in itself – to keep the band going for that long! It’s not an easy thing to do, especially being from Adelaide, a scene that everyone seems to ignore or forget about. That must be challenging in itself – honestly?
NE: There are times, playing shows here, where the turnouts aren’t as good as what you imagine. Even the bigger acts coming from overseas, Adelaide gets skipped quite a bit. But then again, you could say the same thing about Perth and Darwin especially. They get skipped all the time. We don’t have it too bad, in the scheme of things, but it could be a lot better, like Melbourne and Sydney, especially.
L: I was in Adelaide for the Froth and Fury Fest, and a lot of the bands that play that are from Adelaide. I’ve always had a lot of interest in what’s coming out of there because despite the fact that everyone tends to skip it over, there’s such great musical talent in your part of the world, and always has been.
NE: Yes, and like you said, with the Froth and Fury Fest, that’s always such a great environment. Everytime we’re on it, it’s very positive, everyone’s always so supportive of each other, and you’ve got different industries coming together. You’ve got the brewery side of it, there’s usually a few street vendors and barbers, things like that. It’s a nice coming together of different industries and it’s a lovely vibe.
L: Have you applied to appear there this year?
NE: Not this year… We played a couple of years back, and that was great fun. We definitely loved the free beer. That was a definite plus for us. We love alcohol, in this band! But we’re hoping to be put back on again, because as I said, the crippling debt makes it hard to buy beer so any show where you get free beer is a big plus for us!
L: Was the crippling debt any inspiration behind the new release? And the title is Self-Titled, just in case anyone was confused about what it’s called.
NE: We thought of a few different names for the album, but Eli, the drummer, and I are big fans of a band with a self-titled first album, so that kept popping up. Then there was some discussion about whether to call it Life Pilot or actually Self-Titled.
L: A lot of bands go for the eponymous thing, but calling it Self-Titled really stands out. I have to admit that I’m quite behind on your discography. I have Compass and I’ve heard tracks since then but Self-Titled is the first one I’ve been across properly for a long time. How has the creative process changed over that period?
NE: When that Compass split came out with Statues, our main songwriter was Jake Long. He and his brother Angus were the two that started the band, and he was pretty much the main songwriter. He wrote basically everything. Since then Jake has left the band and we’ve had a few other people come through. Now, everyone in the band contributes to writing. Visually, what we do with the videos and stuff, we all contribute to that too. It’s actually quite even between everyone. With the Self-Titled album, a lot of it was written by Eli on drums, and myself, but will Will (Everlyn) and Jake (Lawrence) being big parts of the band now, they’re just smashing out them out non-stop since then. It feels like every other day, Jake’s got a new song for us, completed. But it’s all kind of very even now, between everyone. Everyone brings their ideas, whether it’s a full song or a riff, or artistic inspiration. We all contribute, which is awesome.
L: Even with all the changes, you have definitely maintained a recognisable sound.
NE: Yeah. It’s still got that Life Pilot sound. I feel that Angus’ vocals make it sound like Life Pilot. With anyone else, it wouldn’t, I don’t think. That might just be a biased point of view. But I think Will and Jake have learnt this as well, and this is for Eli and I – it takes a little while before you can write like a “proper” Life Pilot song. You send through a whole lot of ideas at the start, and they’re all just garbage. No one likes them! That’s the same for everyone that’s written stuff. Then you get about a year of being in the band, and you start to realise what makes a Life Pilot song. It’s the worst riff you can imagine, and you just repeat it over and over again but you just play it slower and slower. If you can accept that, you can write a Life Pilot song!
L: Has there been a continual creative process? This album is just coming out and you mentioned that the other guys are already throwing out new songs.
NE: This album has been written for a couple of years now. We started recording it well over a year ago, so for a lot of us, the songs are a bit old. But I am always coming up with new songs and when it’s about 80% done, I’ll handball it to someone else while I’m racing off to another one. I’m not someone who finishes projects or anything like that. I need someone else to do that for me. People like Eli and Angus are the ones putting it all together and making sure it’s actually a complete project.
L: You must be pretty fortunate to have the guys in the band that you have. Eli’s drumming, for example, is something else and you must feel incredibly lucky to be able to work with that guy.
NE: He’s my favourite drummer that I’ve ever worked with, performed with or written with. He’s very open to bringing in people’s ideas and trying new things. He’s never one for saying, “No, that doesn’t work.” He’s also incredibly intelligent and knows the mechanics behind a band and how it should be run. But I will refuse to ever say that to his face! I will belittle him as much as possible, and the other guys will do the same, because we can’t let that ego of his get too big because he might realise he’s too good for Life Pilot and leave. And we can’t have that.
L: Yeah it’s probably a good thing to keep him in check! You’ve been together for so long now though that you’re probably passed that as a real concern – and as you just said, he’s your main writing partner.
NE: He writes quite a fair bit of it. He’s an incredible drummer, but he’s also a really good arranger and he’s good on guitar and bass and writing dirty, filthy fucking riffs!
L: Life Pilot has a reputation for conceptualising your clips. What is the story behind the one that introduced this album, Mayflower? Are you all involved in that process?
NE: Usually we’ll talk about what music video we want to do next, see if anyone has any ideas and ask Angus the meaning behind the lyrics, and what the song means to him, and from that we’ll get some ideas and see what grows from that. For the Mayflower one, Angus said a lot of meaning was about the loss of his grandma, and the song was dedicated to her. That’s why, throughout the music video, we’ve got family footage from, I believe it was, Angus’s uncle who sent it all through, of old family photos and footage. It just kind of felt right from what Angus had said about reminiscing on family members who’ve passed, incorporating the family footage of passed just felt right with chaotic footage of us jumping around, making fools of ourselves.
L: I’m glad that you don’t take what you do that seriously that you can’t have a chuckle about it, Nick. That’s really what you do it for. Your music is serious and you address a lot of issues, but in the end it should be something that you have fun with.
NE: Yes, 100%! And I feel like if anyone in the band starts to get too serious, the others bring them back into place. I know I’ve definitely had them pull me down a notch from getting too serious. It’s a good group of boys and we keep an eye on each other and make sure the fun is still there.
