Are My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, and perhaps Fugazi cool with you? Do you have an incurable fondness for spacey, fuzzed-out guitar rock? Do you suffer from chronic jock itch or something equally unpleasant? If so, you should indubitably investigate Autolux's Future Perfect pronto. There's no denying that the album is positively derivative, but its eleven nuggets of joy are an absolute welcome to anyone sick and tired of psyche-folk, dance-punk, and other silly sub-genres that eschew distorted guitars like a hard-rocking plague.
Speaking of guitars, there are plenty of those on Future Perfect. The Sonic Youth/My Bloody Valentine namedropping is no mere boast (or feeble attempt at gaining indie cred on my part)- it's a sheer sonic accuracy. The feedback, distortion, and awesomely crunchy ambiance are enough to make The Jesus and Mary Chain and possibly even vacuum cleaners blush. Acoustic guitars? Strings? Synths? Drum programming? Not on this record, bitches. Future Perfect serves up a good, old-fashioned mix of dreamy melodies, very nearly surfable feedback, and superb songwriting.
Oh, and MAJOR bonus points in my book for having a female drummer that doesn't suck. I don't mean to play the misogyny card, but drumming is an art in which the artist has to be undeniably cocksure, and it's sort of hard to do that when one doesn't have a cock. However, Autolux's Carla Azar creates some sweet (and more importantly, LOUD) beats that sound positively male in origin, which is an extremely high compliment to any female drummer.
Again much like My Bloody Valentine, the lyrics are endearingly stupid. "Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake the clouds out/ shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake the stars down/ shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake it downtown" anyone? Fortunately, reading (and typing) that is a lot more painful than hearing it sensuously and androgynously cooed in your ear in front of feedback. No one in their right mind listens to My Bloody Valentine because of the lyrics anyway; the cascading waves of beautifully layered noise are the main attraction in both their case and Autolux's.
By now, you probably already have an idea as to whether or not this thing is your cup of tea at all. Sure it's a throwback, and sure it's derivative, but it is a damn fine derivative throwback. It'll definitely bring some much-needed lighthearted enjoyment into your life, and will probably even help you forget about your jock itch.
