Dylan Pacheco’s new project Cautious Driver makes its first appearance with the single Make It Make Sense, out April 22. Written around the Omnichord—a toy-adjacent electronic instrument—and driven by a lo-fi drum loop, the track quietly disarms with its intimacy. It’s a song about practicing self-care in a world that seems intent on imploding.
“Make It Make Sense is mostly recorded on an Omnichord which is basically a toy keyboard, and now we are figuring out how to play it as a full rock band,” says Pacheco. “It’s fun to just follow the feeling of the song without any expectations of what it will sound like.”
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The project began in spring 2024, after Pacheco moved from Austin, Texas to Portland, Oregon and stepped back into songwriting following a two-year hiatus. Having released music under his own name before, he missed the feeling of playing in a band. Cautious Driver started as a trio with Jack Knopp on drums and Kevin Pickard on bass. After Pickard returned to Oklahoma to start a family, Pacheco and Knopp carried on as a duo. “My old friend, Chance St. George graciously (and gracefully) stepped in to play bass for us for our upcoming performances.”
Cautious Driver will play a release show for the single, then return to what Pacheco calls a flexible, exploratory songwriting process. “We are challenging the idea of what this band can be by not overcommitting ourselves to a certain sound or format,” he says. “I like that we can be sort of nimble in our creative approach.”
Fans of Advance Base, Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Palehound, Alex G, and Cassandra Jenkins will likely recognize a familiar undercurrent of melancholy and dry humor beneath the surface. “The songs I write are inspired by a lot of different things,” Pacheco explains, citing 90s guitar bands, long walks, punk rock as an ethic, Bruce Springsteen, and sparkling water. “Living a car-less lifestyle in the United States, sobriety, dismantling patriarchy and subverting expectations of masculinity” are also part of the thematic makeup.
Now based in Portland, Pacheco is still acclimating to the local scene but speaks highly of bands like Myriads, Speckle, A Lot Of Water, Little Dog, and Drinking Bleach. “There is such a cool musical history in the Pacific Northwest in general,” he adds, referencing Elliott Smith, K Records, Built to Spill, and others that shaped his teenage years.
Looking ahead, Cautious Driver plans to release more singles and possibly tour the region. “I want to continue to be creative in a way that makes sense and is financially viable for me: keep having fun, no burnouts, write songs that are honest (to me), collaborate with good people, love the process and not the result.”
