3 out of 5

Label: TBD Records

Produced by: Autolux

I wasn’t sure we were going to see Autolux again.

They’d made a relative splash with their debut, guided by a notable producer (T. Bone Burnett) and by touring with notable names – White Stripes, Beck, etc. Most of those notable names, who were representative of the crossroads of pop music at the time – with rock revivalism going strong, and the digital post-CD age taking fuller shape, and wider access to more music and music-making tools blurring the lines between indie and mainstream – most of the era’s / genre’s big names could be spotted as influencing Autolux’s first album, with the band rather honing that via their collective histories into quite a sharp, grabbing rock gem. 

More directly, while that gem still rocks today, it’s also very much a product of its time, and vocalist Greg Edward’s other project, Failure, and drummer Carla Azar’s very busy session schedule, suggested this was maybe a one-off side project. Indeed, more years than the relative norm for a followup ticked by. 

In retrospect, the group was actually consistently touring / working this whole time, but sophomore release Transit Transit – sans Burnett’s guiding hand – seemed (to me) like it came out of the blue. 

And that from-my-perspective backstory is important because of how it perhaps aligns with the album’s overall vibe: Transit has a very slow-roll approach in all regards, peeling back some of the more surface scenester elements and focusing on melody, and a very patient interplay of harmonies and beats. This is the core of the Autolux “sound” – Edward’s vocals, the particular guitar tone, and Azar’s snakey beats are instantly identifiable – but this sound is the entirety of the album.  

Which would sound like a good thing. It is not a bad thing. However, it’s the tradeoff of taking this in-house – and I hold this parallel to Autolux going into tour mode for several years, further absorbing their influences while maybe not actively working on new material – that the output doesn’t necessarily feel more personal or more workshopped, it rather has a kind of autopilot vibe. …And that’s a horrible thing to say, since I have no clue as to the sweat that goes into producing something like this. I can only speak to its effect on me, which never grabs the way Future Perfect did. It is as though without Burnett pushing and prodding at the material, the Autolux crew weren’t synthesizing the zeitgeist into something fresh – rather going along with it, nodding their heads, standing out via that “sound” while also not making anything that hits at an emotional level; Transit Transit doesn’t resonate. 

But with the group’s inherent skills, and their various histories in the field, it’s also impossible not to script some catchy, pleasant tunes, autopiloted or not. And if you happen to like ‘lux’s core elements – which I certainly do – the album surely still works. Again, it’s not bad, I just can’t say it sticks past while you’re listening to it. And with followup Pussy’s Dead again bringing a notable producer on, for what I’d consider another top tier effort, it’s possible this is a group that simply needs some outside ears to help shape what’s inherently there. Transit Transit is a snapshot of that unsharpened state.