2 out of 5

Label: Sixgunlover

Producer: An Automotive?

The more I listened to this the better it got, but I need to go with my original gut instinct on it.  AA has a lot of the touches of Texas / Sixgun groups – the affected singing style, the mixture of acoustics with electronics, the varied drumming – but it’s not quite identifiable enough, or unidentifiable enough (like Quien Es, Boom!, for example) to make you want to jump and listen to the disc more than once.  The vocals are also a bit cringy.  The Allmusic review compares it to Perry Farrel’s whine, but Farrel had some oomph behind it, and that oomph has carried a lot of obnoxious singers into this bonkers territory where you can dig it.  Singer Joe Campagna is a bit too reedy to carry that, though, sinking the sound into this weird emo feel, which isn’t helped by song titles like ‘Mannequins Are Beautiful.’  Thankfully the words aren’t as predictable.  Though most lines that spring forward don’t do much in the way of illustrating any particular feeling, when things get a little stranger, as on ‘Communal Lobe,’ where Joe speaks it aloud instead of trying to hit high notes, it finds a nice monotone Vehicle Birth sound, where the non-sequitors stack up with the musical wanderings to equal something you can nod your head and/or bliss out too.  This is followed by ‘The Anchor,’ which uses an old fallback of a chanty callout to get over the lyrical hump, but it works, and is a good way to close out the album.

Musically, there’s definite talent here, especially in the playfully shifting drumming, but you keep waiting for a break that doesn’t quite come (except in moment on ‘Lobe’).  Not that an album has to rock, but the setups lend themselves to turning into something, and instead the songs tend to stick with their initial groove the whole way through.  Some tracks do a pretty Album Leaf bit, (and I’m big on band comparisons this review, eh?) but I also take issue with Album Leaf style bands who just write some pretty songs that don’t evolve, so that’s that.  ‘Ballad of Julee Cruise’ is perfect – evoking exactly the kind of dusty, Lynchian atmosphere the title suggests.  It’s well placed in the album’s middle, to keep you going for those more compelling last couple of tracks, and serves as a reminder that the guys in Automotive know what they’re doing… they just chose to apply that know-how, overall, in a way that’s not the most compelling.