Automatic

Automatic makes deviant pop music that cuts through the brainrot. Balancing irreverence with sharp commentary, the L.A. three-piece approached their third album with a dark sense of humor and a swing in their step. Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Halle Saxon (bass, vocals), and Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) -believe that the message of change is best served with a backbeat and a cheeky groove, and on Is it Now?they demand we look at the world's oppressive structures with fresh urgency.Cybertrucks are overtaking the streets. No one's embarrassed about 'selling out' anymore. Wendy's wants to be your friend. Musicians have spent generations singing about saving the kidsand sticking it to The Man, but those are empty phrases. While political slogans serve an important purpose, Automatic encourages us to confront our complicity in the structures destroying us with a different tool -the kind of song you can't get out of your head. "You have to get people moving," says Izzy. "It's harder and harder to enjoy a sense of escapism; it's tinged with delusion. Action feels more rewarding. "Since their last record, 2022's Excess, Automatic toured with Tame Impala, The Marías and IDLES, while the members' individual lives took on new meanings. Izzy dove into music production and rescuing stray cats; Halle left behind bad habits for good and enrolled in botany classes; Lola now lives in the country, immersed in nature and spending most of her time with horses. They'd formed Automatic nine years ago with a bare-bones understanding of their instruments that served their minimalist post-punk songs well. Since then, they've locked in as a band, discovering their collective synergy as musicians and developing an intuitive way to communicate through their instruments. Staring down their third album, they went through an exhausting process to create something truly galvanizing.They first tried tracking Is It Now?themselves, but the sessions were hit by bad luck: recording gear malfunctioned, and a tape machine died. After spells and rituals, they shook it off and returned to the studio with producer Loren Humphrey (Arctic Monkeys, Nice As Fuck, Cameron Winter), recording at Valentine Studios in L.A., then New York. Balancing solo lives and varying temperaments - Izzy's desire for control, Halle's love of all things DIY, and Lola's unpredictability -they met daily to record until "whenever we dropped," says Izzy.Izzy mixed the record with Loren in a New York basement, chainsmoking and obsessing over details. She banned talk of the track "Mercury" after syncing a drum machine to two separate tape tracks. Stubbornly, they stuck with analog tape. "There's not many people doing it," Halle says, "so it makes you commit."