Idiot Pilot

Strange We Should Meet Here, huh? Not really. After all, you expect a flashy, sassy new band like Idiot Pilot to wake up in bed with a major label. Signed to Reprise right out of the gate, this teenage duo makes moody electro-punk that reeks of self-conscious novelty and haircut cred. And yet there are a couple of authentically strange meetings going on within the disc’s fourteen tracks. Smashing Pumpkins’ pinch-nosed opera laced with the ring-tone pop of the Postal Service? The Used dry-humping U2’s Zooropa? These aren’t dangerous liaisons; they’re train wrecks. But even with everything Idiot Pilot has going against it (for instance, the imminent threat of being compared to Head Automatica), there’s an energy and recklessness stabbing out of Strange that point, perhaps, toward greater things ahead. Just don’t look for them here.