A flight you'll fancy

Paul Wilkinson wants to know something.

“Have you ever seen the Monty Python sketch where the Knight has all his limbs hacked off?” We say yes, and he carries on with a grin. “Well, at one point it was definitely like that with us.”
Oh dear. The last time we hooked up with Paul, his band, The Amazing Pilots, were a highly promising four piece on the cusp of releasing a fine single through the well-connected London indie Easy Tiger!
Within weeks, though, and, a few agonising days before the record was due to hit the shops, the label folded, leaving the band high and dry and lugging around boxes full of superfluous CDs. To make matters worse, not long afterwards, founding members Jono Johnston and Tim Millen decided to depart, meaning that Paul and his brother Phil were left to ensure the flame stayed lit. Thankfully, despite the spectacle of all those airborne body parts, the pair managed to keep their heads.
“There was never any real question but that we’d carry on,” Paul insists. “The label going under was just one of those things. We miss the other guys but we’re still friends. If you want to do something creatively then you’re always going to encounter difficulties. If you really believe in it, you have to carry on and thankfully we did. At the minute everything is really positive. We just can’t wait to get cracking.”
The source of Paul’s optimism can be located firmly in the 12 plus tracks that make up their debut LP, Hello My Captor – a warm, soulful, frequently beautiful record that, if given the chance, will spend the next year worming its way into any stray hearts that cross its path.
Recorded with Dave Lynch in Chicago, given a polish by David Odlum in the Loire Valley, and containing sterling cameos from Gemma Hayes and Iain Archer, there is a subtlety, accomplishment and tenderness to the album that few bands of their stature can match.
“I think it’s great music that, if you want to go looking, has a level in it that’s a bit more meaningful,” says Paul. ”We’re not the kind of people, or the kind of band, that overstate ourselves but if people come to it, I’m sure that they will love it. There seems to be an obsession at the moment to make everything as bright and loud as possible. I just think it’s more rewarding to try to be a bit more subtle: to draw people in and keep their attention. If people are given a chance to hear us, they’ll find something there to connect with and respond to.”
The band’s long-held Dylan and Beefheart fixations help maintain Captor’s blissful, autumnal glow, but Paul is keen to point out how an encounter with Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, helped usher in a new, and more rewarding, lyrical approach.
“It really made me look at how I’d been writing. I just began to experiment a wee bit with that – imagine other kinds of lives, other kinds of people. I’ve always written badly whenever I’ve tried to tie things down explicitly. I think music always works best when you’re prepared to accept a little bit of confusion. I just love it when you’re forced to go looking between the lines. That’s where all the important stuff tends to lie.”

Is Geoff Topley easing off in his old age? Renowned for his thrice-yearly double and triple albums, his latest release as Foamboy is a positively skinny double A-side – ‘Star/What Did I Do To You’. Geoff’s near-demented productivity has, in the past, sometimes obscured the quality of the work. In this case, the two tracks are given plenty of opportunity to express themselves to the full. Which is no bad thing, as their brooding, wheezy, moody, Depeche-like textures play brilliantly on repeated listens. They could well be the best things he has ever written. Contact [email protected] for a copy.

The Answer have just released their new EP – Come On, Free Me, to coincide with a number of club dates throughout Ireland. As you might gauge from the title, the boys take their cue unashamedly from the likes of Led Zep and Oasis – [email protected].

‘Shang High’, Jupiter Ace’s first (official) 12-inch single (which includes a Drum and Bass overhaul from former Roo Nation member Marty ‘Glue’ McMullan) is now available throughout the land. Consider yourselves warned.