With the recent release of their goofy, costume-laden music video, Choreography, The Pilgrims have made their maiden voyage into the New World of record singles. Over most of the next year, the garage-rock band from Windsor plans to release a new single every other month, each accompanied by a music video and associated artwork.
“It’s nice to try something a little bit different, just to mix it up,” said Davis McGraw, a guitarist and vocalist in the band, in a phone call this week from Hanover Strings, where he and other band members work and rehearse. “We’ll see how we like it at the end of the year.”
So far, it seems to McGraw that working on albums in such a piecemeal fashion allows for a freer creative process than chipping away at a larger-scale project. Instead of a cohesive, full-length EP that’s bound together by a certain theme or feel, “each song has its own flavor,” McGraw said, and “can stand alone as its own thought-piece.”
The group seems to be taking full advantage of this opportunity to play around with eclectic styles; possible sonic twists to look forward to include a “late-’70s, suit rock, Elvis Costello feel,” a Zeppelin-esque mandolin and “some weird, kind of cheesy ’80s synth stuff,” McGraw said. “It’s fun to stretch out a little bit. … And with a six-person band, we now have enough people to pull out all sorts of interesting arrangements.”
Video ideas currently being kicked around include a riff on sports movies, a boardroom catastrophe and “a Godfather thing with babies and dogs,” he said. “Nobody else seems to want to work with them.”
The music will, of course, retain some of what McGraw described as The Pilgrims’ “hallmarks” — namely, loudish guitars and an overarching sense of playfulness.
“That’s the fun thing about being able to do all these different singles,” he said. “It’s still us, but we’re not tied to making it a coherent statement … and that’s fun.”
The Pilgrims perform at Windsor Station on Saturday night, along with Faux in Love, starting at 9:30. For more information about the band, visit pilgrimsvt.com.