Autopilot Is For Lovers To the Wolves

(Bladen Co. Records)

[VOCAL THEATRICS] Adrienne Hatkin, of Autopilot is for Lovers, has a voice that will stop you in your tracks. Direct and scratchy, part PJ Harvey shriek and Joanna Newsom warble, it takes some getting used to. Detractors of her band’s sound will point to Hatkin’s peculiar pipes as a major roadblock.

On their debut record, To the Wolves, Hatkin and multi-instrumentalist Paul Seely (also of the Builders and the Butchers) build a dense web of sound, ranging from sparse banjo-led ballads to urgent accordion dirges. “Whale Belly,” a klezmer-tinted slow march, isn’t the most inviting opener, but it’s a logical introduction to Hatkin’s trill vibratos and Autopilot’s layered instrumentation.

It took me a few spins to really understand a record that pits a crunchy, molten rocker like “Left of the Sun”—with Hatkin doing her best to sound like Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker—next to “Pine Box Town,” an unsettling ballad about not finishing your chores. The album might fall flat without Hatkin, but if you take time to really listen to the skill and confidence in her vocal delivery, To the Wolves reveals itself as an honest document from one of Portland’s best singers.

Quiet Countries The Karate Williams Diaries

(Central Service Records)

[DEAR DIARY] The Karate Williams Diaries is a concept record that finds Portland’s Leb Borgerson distancing himself from his singer-songwriter past, fully diving into the world of instrumental hip-hop. Recorded after Borgerson suffered a hand injury that limited his guitar playing, The Diaries (so called because each track is labeled with the date it was recorded—about as conceptual as the album really gets) is a largely instrumental pastiche of drum breaks and loops, filling the void left by Prefuse 73’s One Word Extinguisher. Many tracks, like the ethereal “Karate and the Whale,” build out of slow-pulsing grooves, with moody drums walking in and out of the song like a mother checking on her newborn every 30 seconds.

The beats on the record are quite good, but a few songs suffer from the lack of a human touch or voice. Just three tracks feature singing (or guest A.E.D. rhyming), and after hearing standout cut “El Radio Radio”—the lone song to feature Borgerson’s sultry vocals—one can’t help but wish Karate Williams had written a few more words in his diary.

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SEE IT: Autopilot is for Lovers plays Thursday, April 16, at Holocene. 9 pm. $5. 21+. Quiet Countries plays Sunday, April 19, at Holocene. 8:30 pm. $6. 21+.