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April 21, 2009 - The music of Portland, Oregon-based, five-piece group Autopilot is for Lovers is anything but conventional. But vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Adrienne Hatkin admits that when she was a kid, she shied away from "anything that wasn't totally mainstream" and wouldn't touch her father's records. Now, Hatkin embraces eccentricities and looks to capture a sense of magical realism in her music.

Thanks to Hatkin's surprising vocals and the wide variety of instruments the group deploys, To the Wolves is an intriguing mix of sounds and styles. Hatkin describes her music to co-workers as "indie-rock blues with some Balkan folk inspiration," but besides this overall melding of genres, there is also a lot of variance among the songs themselves. With its emphasis on the accordion and creative lyrics, "Whale Belly" is dramatic and darkly romantic. "Come Now" has more classical and melodic instrumentation, thanks to a lovely piano interlude, "Left of the Sun" borders on grunge, and the intro to "Trust" sounds like it could be a quiet Iron & Wine folk song. While all the stylistic changes from one song to the next may be "disconcerting," as Hatkin says one reviewer concluded, the haphazard conglomeration certainly keeps things interesting. "I guess I'd rather have people be disconcerted than bored," says Hatkin.

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