Friday Pilots Club

Some bands just can’t agree on the merits of Primus. Some bands just aren’t meant to spend a month at a remote cabin in Georgia in an attempt to finish their long-in-the-works debut album. Thankfully, Friday Pilots Club is both of those bands. 

Formed in 2017 as a duo of vocalist Caleb Hiltunen and bassist Drew Polivick, the Chicago-based combo has grown in recent years to include guitarists Sean Burke and James Kourafas and drummer Eric Doar, whose contributions are readily apparent on Friday Pilots Club’s electrifying first full-length, Nowhere. On an album positively crammed with irresistible grooves, big riffs and even bigger choruses, its most distinctive quality might just be the varied tastes and talents of its members, demonstrating once and for all how consensus is overrated but compromise is often key. 

“For me, that’s what I’m most proud of,” says Polivick, who met his bandmates while they all pursued music or music-adjacent majors at Columbia College. “We used to be a two-piece, and then we were a two-piece with these three guys. They started writing with us and playing on the songs, but it still didn’t quite feel like a band. We finally feel like this album is an amalgamation of what all of us like and what all of us believe in.”