Much has been said about Adrienne Hatkin, of the uber-eclectic local band Autopilot is for Lovers, and her remarkable voice. Her gypsy wail is enchanting to say the least, sounding like a band of vaudevillians jumped down her throat.
If the beginnings of APIFL were simple, the musical territory and lyricAL terrain is anything but.
“Paul [Seely] and I started dating shortly after we starting playing music together four years ago,” says Hatkin. “Matthew is his brother. Stirling [Myles] and Jessie [Dettwiler] joined the band fairly recently after their project Strangers Die Every Day disbanded. Emily [Nelson] was the friend of a friend, and now she is our friend.”
Hatkin hails from Montclair, N.J., while Paul Seely is an Oregon boy, born and raised in Salem. It is difficult to pinpoint where along the way they developed their sound.
“I guess the unconventional roots just come from buying instruments at antique stores and then seeing what songs you end up making with them,” says Hatkin.
With mixes of klezmer, rambling folk, blues and zydeco, APIFL comes armed to the teeth with violin, bass, trumpet, drums, viola, accordion, banjo and guitar, not to mention the vocals which mutate into a full range of instruments in their own right.
“My favorite instrument is definitely the accordion,” says Hatkin. “It’s just capable of creating this feeling of being in another time and part of the world. It’s also great like a piano in that you can play three melodies at once—probably more if you’re really talented, or have an extra arm.”
Extra arms aside, the idea of being in another time and part of the world really allows APIFL to open up their musical minds and create something truly unique, even if it does whiff of something very familiar, something very Portland. With acts like The Decemberists and The Builders and the Butchers (which Hatkin was once affiliated with) banking on their “otherness” quality—that of nontraditional arrangements, found instruments and well-founded pop sensibilities to lay over the top—APIFL might just be their heir-apparent.
From funeral dirge to accordion waltz to guitar drone, their gypsy hymnals are like spirits trapped in bodies that can hardly contain them. It all comes back to the guiding light on their journey to the sublime—the voice.
Nestled awkwardly into the crevices of Bob Dylan and Cat Power, or, more adequately, the women of CocoRosie, Hatkin is the choir girl that had to sit outside the window of the church and sing to her dolls while fuming and spinning out her wicked tales.
“I sometimes have a hard time telling a linear ‘story’ in a song,” says Hatkin. “But I really like to write independent phrases that all revolve around a theme. So I guess in a way my songs lyrics are like a series of haikus? Only not so … peaceful.”
The telling of linear stories can be daunting, but the honesty that Hatkin allows herself in talking about writing translates to her meticulous nature of getting it right for an album.
The band recently released their debut full-length album To the Wolves with eagerness and in earnest.
“We approached it carefully,” says Hatkin. “It took us three years to record To the Wolves. Some of the songs on it are up to seven years old. It’s definitely not a concept album or anything, just what I thought were our best songs up to that point.”
With musical chops appealing to a vast array of musical styles, an audience that craves something new and exciting and the voice of a fallen angel to boot, APIFL might just be the band to put the injection, or the folk remedy, into a Portland music scene that’s in need of a blood transfusion.