My Own Co-Pilot Keeps Driving Emotive ‘Post-Hardcore’ Alive With Dynamic ‘Textures’ EP

My Own Co-Pilot presents a noteworthy alt-heavy sound on their 2018 release, Textures. The band sounds incredibly good at packing a ton of feeling – and, well, texture – into music that is itself not particularly blinding or anything like that. Instead, they just clearly know what they’re doing. They know how to effectively wield a single guitar and bass line, and they know how to pair that with an effective backing drumbeat for maximum effect. 

Where some artists fall by the wayside through spinning out of control under the weight of their musical ambition, the members of My Own Co-Pilot chart an instead bright and actually rather focused path forward for themselves musically. They’ve dug into the songwriting process itself, it feels like, and it’s paid off in a set of songs that are almost surprisingly engaging.

There’s nothing tacky about Textures. They’ve taken trends – “screamo,” “post-hardcore,” etc., – and turned them into something fresh and new. While sounding like they’re conscious of songwriting trends that come before them, they’re their own thing, which is important and not always seen.

Their sound feels, as mentioned, somewhat sparing and yet at the same time forceful. Their genre often falls into blatant emotion, which is fine, but can detract from the ability of a listener to appreciate the music itself on a deeper level – but that doesn’t happen here. The band knows how to blend emotion and musicality, letting the two co-exist and turn into something new for the listener.

Through it all, there’s a classic emotive feel. The vocal work feels barely a step away from spoken word at times, which for the type of music the band puts forward,works. The lyrics themselves being shared lend towards the broad but personal feel captured by the traditional ish but very effective songwriting. Both musically and thematically, there’s a sense of gentle but very present longing and drive combined with the spectrum of love to hurt along the way.

Textures turns out to be a great example of what music can be in the hands of someone who’s both creatively ambitious and knows what they’re doing.

5/5 Stars

Listen below, via Bandcamp.