The pumped up, tightly wound first single from Automatic’s new album Excess boldly proclaims a ‘New Beginning’ and while tightening things up from the LA trio’s 2019 debut Signal it’s not necessarily a huge leap forward. It is, however, a surge of energy that handclaps manically in front of your face and demands your attention. This surge is almost exactly reprised towards the end of the record on the hectic synth-punk of ‘NRG’, just in case your eyes were starting to droop, although they really shouldn’t be.
Most of Excess is an engrossing reminder that there is more to life than guitars for a band comfortably established in the outer reaches of post punk. More often than not the songs are outlined by Halle Saxon-Gaines’ boxy basslines and artfully coloured in by Izzy Glaudini’s synth musings. ‘Lucy’ is an exercise in restraint, the bass doing the heavy lifting in a Dry Cleaning/Yard Act way just as it does for ‘On The Edge’, and on both tracks the synthesiser complements rather than overpowers. The relationship is artfully strained in the dizzying swirls of ‘Skyscraper’, but the clanging sounds midway through ‘Realms’ step just too far and the illusioncracks.
Although comparisons can be made to the band’s 6Music contemporaries, the clear influences stretch back the best part of 50 years – the debt to Kraftwerk is rightly worn as a badge of honour throughout, and there is more than a whiff of the 80s to the saccharine New Order sound of ‘Automaton’.
In fact, so interesting are the soundscapes it can be easy to miss the poetry of the lyrics (“under the rule of a crass manifesto, lights overhead spell divisions and disaster” on ‘Automaton’) or the message they carry – ‘Teen Beat’ lays bare a creeping climate dread with an insistent refrain of “turning around so you will face me”. Excess is a record that deserves and rewards multiple listens, even if at times it can feel more like something to observe and move on from than to feel and carry with you.
Words - Joe Ponting
Automatic official