New music review with singles from Automatic 'Is It Now?' and pôt-pot 'WRSW'
- Julia Mason aka The Decibel Decoder
- Jun 24
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 25
Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her new music review with singles from Automatic Is It Now? and pôt-pot WRSW
Artist: Automatic
Track: Is it Now?
LA trio Automatic have release new single Is It Now? the title track from their third album to be released later this year via Stones Throw. They have collaborated with producer Loren Humphrey (Cameron Winter, Nice As Fuck, Arctic Monkeys) to build on the sound of previous albums Signal and Excess – minimalist yet danceable songs which they describe as “deviant pop”.
After they finished touring their last record, 2022’s Excess, each member of the LA trio pursued their own interests: Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals) honed her skills as a producer; Halle Saxon Gaines (bass, vocals) enrolled in botany classes; and Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) got married, moved to the country, and began caring for horses. However the pull to make music drew them together again.
The title track from Is It Now? celebrates being authentically yourself. Its call-and-response chorus vies between two points of view: the rebellious perspective and the mass culture one. The track is tight and whip smart, the electronics creating a lightness of touch which bobs and weaves throughout. The combined vocals create a real sense of togetherness, a unity in trying to navigate the world.
Izzy further expands: “The thing I think about the most on a day-to-day basis is: how do you have a sense of joy while the world seems to be collapsing, and you feel so powerless? I feel like, as American citizens, we have a responsibility to pull the levers to stop the machine. Is It Now? is about trying to not feel like a victim in this environment. It's important to still feel a sense of joy, even amongst all the horrible shit going on in the world.”
Automatic hit the road in North America for a co-headlining tour with Sextile this Autumn; full dates below.
Automatic Live Dates
September
16 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
17 Denver, CO - Meow Wolf Denver
19 Chicago, IL - Outset
20 Detroit, MI - Tangent Gallery
21 Toronto, ON - Velvet Underground
23 Montreal, QC - Théâtre Fairmount
24 Boston, MA - Brighton Music Hall
25 Brooklyn, NY - Warsaw
26 Philadelphia, PA - The Foundry @ The Fillmore
27 Washington, DC - Black Cat
29 Asheville, NC - The Grey Eagle Tavern & Music Hall
30 Nashville, TN - The Blue Room at Third Man Records
October
1 Atlanta, GA - The Masquerade
3 Dallas, TX - Studio at The Factory
4 Houston, TX - White Oak Music Hall
5 Austin, TX - Mohawk (Outside)
6 El Paso, TX - The Lowbrow Palace
8 Phoenix, AZ - The Crescent Ballroom
9 Las Vegas, NV - Swan Dive
10 San Diego, CA - The Observatory North Park
11 Los Angeles, CA - The Novo
* * *
Artist: pôt-pot
Track: WRSW
Lisbon-based Irish band pôt-pot confirm their debut album Warsaw 480km set for release on 19 September via Felte. They have released the first single from the album WRSW.
The band infuse the propulsive grooves of krautrock with a phosphorescent psych-rock radiance, all underscored by harmonium drones, hypnotic vocal harmonies and deep layers of rough-hewn texture. Evolved primarily from demos by multi-instrumentalist and lead vocalist Mark Waldron-Hyden during a period of grief and personal upheaval, the album came to life through a series of live, full-band studio sessions. The quintet unified in an embrace of raw catharsis alongside a sweetly sinister edge.
Waldron-Hyden expands on the creation of Warsaw 480km: “I wrote the first batch of songs while not really living in one place, so I think they have a kind of transient feel to them – developing them with the band helped me process an era in which I was emotionally freewheeling, so they remind me equally of the beautiful experience we shared as a creative unit and the difficult times that inspired them.”
New single WRSW exemplifies this complexity. There is a real sense of forward motion in the rhythm of the instrumentation yet this is combined with an underlying tension. The drone of the harmonium and the vocal delivery bring an edge which grows as the track progresses. There is a hypnotic element to the metronomic beat which surprisingly slows at the end, leaving the listener hanging on to prolonged outro, unable to pull away until the final note.
About the song, Waldron-Hyden further explains: “WRSW is a chronicle of being driven in a very nice car to collect and deliver my father’s ashes, and how that odd comfort in such an awful situation jarred me; at one point the driver told me about a journey he’d taken from Ireland to Poland, where after days of driving, in the dead of night, a single road sign appeared, reading "WARSAW 480 KM". I identified with that image of blackness punctuated suddenly by some faraway but tangible relief.”
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