Autopilot Is For Lovers

A conversation with Adrienne Hatkin

(September 2009)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

Portland's Autopilot Is For Lovers (formerly just Autopilot) open their debut record, To the Wolves, with a challenging, rewarding and tone-setting track that chews up almost seven minutes with its blend of accordion, Balkan folk and an unusual vibrato that local pulse-takers Willamette Week accurately refer to as "stop you in your tracks."

The keeper of that track-stopping voice, Adrienne Hatkin, recently gave The Red Alert the lowdown on her collaboration with fellow Autopilot Paul Seely, the origins of her affection for the accordion, and how she sees her band's sound shifting in the future.

I read that NPR piece on you from the spring and it mentioned briefly how your musical tastes had evolved substantially from your childhood, when you swam happily in the mainstream waters as a music fan.  How mainstream are we talking about?  Who were some of your favorites during your formative years? 

My first rock star obsession (in this case pop star) was with Paula Abdul; that went on for about two years.  In middle school I loved En Vogue.

And then your bio mentions that when you were dreaming up songs as a kid, they often included a trumpet.  How did a trumpet come to captivate your imagination?

I don't think I understood at the time that what I heard in my head was a trumpet, or what any of the instrumentation was supposed to be.  But it probably came from being around so much of my dad's smooth jazz, which I now cannot stand.  Sorry, Dad.  One of these days I'll have to record that song, though it's a lot less impressive coming from a 30-year-old than a 9-year-old.

I came to Autopilot fresh on To The Wolves, having not heard the Sore Eyes EP; presumably a lot of listeners will arrive the same way.  How important was it to do that EP before launching into the full-length – and were there discoveries you made during the EP process that you were able to use when putting together the LP?

We started recording the EP and the album at the same time. We kind of wanted to get Sore Eyes out of the way, and sometimes I think you can hear it. But because we took more time on To the Wolves, I think the songs make more sense sonically. Since Paul is always playing these songs as well as recording and producing them, his familiarty with them was translated direclty to the recordings, does that make sense? He got to really craft the album in every way, from start to finish. I think it would have been totally different if we had the rough tracks mixed by someone who wasn't in the band.

Is it safe to assume that some new songs have begun to kick around?  Do they sound like they could fit on To The Wolves or do they belong to another animal altogether, so to speak?

There was a time a few years ago when I was going in a garage-rock direction, but sadly I don't seem to write songs like that anymore. Since we recorded To the Wolves, we've started to play with Emily Nelson, Stirling Myles and Jessie Dettwiler (Stirling and Jessie are from Strangers Die Every Day) and they've played a big part in making some of the new songs into mildly epic rock-outs while most of the others are kind of whimsical, bittersweet ballads (if I do say so). Structurally I don't think the next album will be too unlike To the Wolves, but I think it will sound totally different.

The accordion isn’t a complete stranger to modern indie music, but it is a sort of much-maligned instrument.  When did you pick it up and what drew you to it?
 

I get so spoiled, being surronded by Portlanders who appreciate or play the accordion. Every now and then I get a proverbial slap in the face, like one time a college friend from New Jersey saw me playing on the street here in Portland and said, "Interesting hobby you've picked up since college" - like I was juggling rabbits or something. I blame Weird Al and Steve Urkel.

Anyway, I started playing because my old roommate Jenny used to bring home movies by Emir Kustirica and almost all of them feature a character who plays the accordion (usually a 10-year-old boy with glasses). I remember saying "I want to play the accordion!" when we were watching While Father Was Away On Business and a weekl ater there was one for $110 at the antique store next to where I worked. Kismet!

I think track sequencing is one of the underrated factors behind a good album, particularly for bands that are all over the map with their influences and styles.  Listeners by and large are obviously paying less and less attention to albums as top-to-bottom listening experiences – but how much work was put into shaping that arc of To The Wolves?

Yeah, that was a lot harder than I'd anticipated. Paul and I (and others) had a lot of back-and-forth trying to decide on the order. The hardest I think is the first song - it was a bold move on our part to put a 6+ minute song as the opener, but in my mind the mood of "Whale Belly" was the best choice.

The vocals seem to be the dare-I-say polarizing part of the album, with both fans and skeptics often latching onto the vibrato.  How did you discover or develop that signature style?

Well, I definitely didn't do it consciously. I actually recently tried to stop singing with so much vibrato, but then I realized I don't need to stop singing the way I sing, I probably just need to stop reading reviews.