Six years is a long time. That's why it's hard not to let expectations confound the experience of listening to Autolux' Transit Transit. Imagine this: you have a baby, and it's born the day Future Perfect was released. By now, that kid can talk; hell, that kid can write. And that kids' whole life is filled with memories of Future Perfect, you listening to Future Perfect, and you saying, over and over, "When are Autolux going to make a new album?"
By now, Autolux could have broken up and reformed many times as a reggae band, a jam band, a Mesopotamian flute trio, but no, instead they have come back to us much as they left: a band that makes moping sound great. It's what they do best-- out of the starting gates, they gave us "Turnstile Blues" which defines everything they do well: the huge, Bonhamian shuffle of Carla Azar's drums, the disaffected falsetto and melodic bassmanship of Eugene Goreshter, and the slinky, stalking feedback of Greg Edwards. Together, along with all the "doot-doot-doots" and left-field melodies, you've got noise pop at it's finest, jarring dissonance made hummable.
So those expecting a big surprise from Transit Transit won't be disappointed with the first and title track. It begins with a bit of sampled percussion that's the slamming of a freezer door; more than apt for Autolux, a sound both chilly and familiar. But familiar ends at the atmosphere, as their instrumentation has been replaced with large upright piano chords and ethereal harmonies -- no big drums, no bassmanship, and moreover, no guitar. It's a nice surprise, followed by the big sigh you'll let out hearing the opening of the next track, "Census". Here's good ol' 2004 Autolux, making the most atonal guitar abstraction into an inescapable hook.
Most of the album works with this same switch-up: for every Sonic Youth-tinged guitar storm, there's something new, like track 3, "Highchair", which is somewhere in between trip-hop and Kid A, with
Despite their branching out, the album still feels cohesive. Maybe too much so; a minor gripe here is the production, which could have used a little more variety. As odd a choice as T-Bone Burnett was for their first album, there was an eccentric factor at work that kept the arrangements interesting. Transit Transit's use of toy piano, while a great foil for the atonal wail of feedback, is a bit grating after a few songs. And as much as they change things up, they almost seem to be cribbing from Future Perfect in the track order, working up to their big closer "The Science of Imaginary Solutions", this album's paler photocopy of "Capital Kind of Strain".
Overall, it's great to have them back, and despite minor quibbles and the interminable wait, it's still a new Autolux album, which is still a really, really nice thing. But best of all, your first-grader can finally stop hearing you whine about it.
[Autolux Myspace]
[Buy Transit Transit from TBD Records]
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