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I got this album directly from Autodrone on a CDr with the track listing written on the back of a shop receipt. I’ve never heard of RiteAid before, and I hadn’t heard anything of Autodrone until recently. And while only US readers of this are able to do their shopping at that particular store chain, a lot of people everywhere are going to hear about Autodrone, and soon.
Mixing proto-industrial electronics with densely guitared wall of sound pop sensibilities, Autodrone make a glorious noise on each of ‘Strike A Match’s twelve tracks. Add to this aural bombardment the operatic swoop of Katherine Kennedy’s vocal and the New York quartet can do very little wrong. Fourth track ‘Kerosene Dreams’ highlights this mixture of styles utlising thunderous blasts of controlled feedback and off-kilter electronics,and seguing almost seamlessly into into the blissfully atmospheric ‘A Rose Has No Teeth’ a song drenched with soaring chords and some smartly turned out double timed drumming. The wistful and almost folkish title track contains some hidden barbs of its own and a heartbreakingly beautiful vocal that will remain in your memories long after you’ve heard it (unless of course you buy the album). The key to Autodrones ability is, paradoxically, their lack of finesse. Where their musicianship could slide into over fussed arrangements Autodrone aren’t afraid to grit their teeth and let us hear exactly what they want us to. Their blend of electronica and guitar energy recalls Throwing Muses at their most overwhelming, and Autodrone are only just getting started. reviewed by: jon gorden for thisisnottv.co.uk |
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Shoegaze as a constant form still provides the thrills of its origin points, but admittedly too many bands avoid the sheer bite and anger of a lot of its earliest practitioners — groups like early Lush, Bleach, the Charlottes, and of course My Bloody Valentine itself. New York's Autodrone, while not consciously drawing from many of those bands, finds its own strong voice on its full-length debut, cranking up not only the guitars but the sharp vocal sentiments and style of Angel Lorelei. She cuts through the mix rather than blissing out in it, and as a result adds a strong smack to the overall sound. Songs such as the near-strident "Final Days" and "Sometime" have a presence that probably hits even more strongly live, but on disc still sounds brutal enough. Guitarist Justin Alisauskas, while working from familiar templates, makes his own mark on songs like "100000 Years of Revenge," all tremolo abuse and howling mania, and the huge slow burn of "Moth of July," the closest the album gets to full-on modern psych doom. Things begin wonderfully with "Strike a Match," a classic shoegaze number but with a chunky undertow, while the singer keeps things a little more direct and focused — lost in the mix but seeking a way out, if you like — while near the end "Of Home" almost feels like a movie-credit closer, a way to bow out on a high note. In a nice twist on everything, "With Arms Raised" takes a distinctly different, far warmer, and more immediately exultant feeling — less a chance to rage loud as it is to kick up one's heels and have a ball, even with the singing remaining laden with just enough sting.
reviewed by: ned raggett for allmusic.com |
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More knee knocking loveliness this time from New York’s Autodrone whose name for the more hardened and long standing readers among you may well remember us mentioning a few years via their debut demo EP which if we recall rightly had some thing of a Sonic Youth twist about its wares which had us pricking our ears up in admiration. There‘s no doubting the bruised beauty and intensely epic thorough breeding that pulses throughout the whole of ‘Strike a Match’. Over the course of the ensuing years Autodrone have honed their mercurial spirit to the point of an enviable fine art, all at once intricate and devastating, caressing and crushing, tender and turbulent ‘Strike a Match‘ is in one short word colossal and in another ravaged.
Within the grooves that weld together these 12 monolithic slabs Autodrone fuse sublimely the family tree roots that tie together the disparate generic dialects of shoe gaze, dream pop and psych along the way taking the unusual step of front loading the turbulence and attrition to morph and develop towards the close into a hitherto more stream lined and tender natured spectacle so that you have the contrasting book ended bridging of the opening salvo of the title cut the simmering strike a pose ’strike a match’ - (a hollowing crystalline and ethereal shade wearing fuzz fuelled tailgates of feedback induced cosmic interference peppered by momentary eruptions of hyper driven grinds a la Curve though ostensibly edgier in texture) - and the frailly majestically mellowing and softly unwinding stratospheric serenade of the blissed out and utterly touching key motifs of ’pictures’ (think hallowing hazes of Flying Saucer Attack shimmers scratching away at a distantly dreamy Sundays - nuff said). From the almost Cathedral-esque framing of the darkly curdling mantra like ’final days’ to the spectral chill of the kaleidoscopic cruise controlled ’kerosene dreams’ with its wrappings of astral ambience and lunatic lightshow swirls all decoded and dusted in its seductive trestles of sonic embroidery deliciously looses itself in its own incubated igloo of mind expanding florescent fog, Autodrone indelibly craft out lush star crossed atmospheric landscapes dimpled with psychotropic accents occasionally breached by shimmering surges of shock treated raptures of grinding power driven bliss out grooves deftly masked in shadowy terrains that to these ears tap sublimely with enviable ease into worlds previously occupied by the likes of the Cranes, Heart Throbs, MBV (check out ‘through the backwoods’), Bleach and Bang Bang Machine the latter of whom are admirably arrested albeit as though shimmying up to mid 80’s era March Violets on the vibrantly sugar rushing effects laden dream coat that is the uber cool and refined ’Something’. Elsewhere the frazzled and fractured proto punk-a-delic death disco goo that is the unforgiving ’can’t keep these’ is certainly pre packed with enough sly knowingness to make Garbage turn green while the buzzing 60’s sourced bubblegum pop thrill of ’with arms raised’ is tastily festooned with a pulse racing feel good effervescence as though a face off between the sugary peppermint pop of Strawberry Switchblade had undergone a spot of re-spraying at the hands of Lush though personally for us we are quite smitten by the doom lashed bleakly barren austere grip of windswept cinematics bled through the drone drilled death rattle of the psycho-tronically opining and haunted ‘moth of July’. Unquestionably recommended. reviewed by: mark barton for losingtoday |
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Clairecords puts out almost entirely shoegazy stuff. This record starts off with a scorcher that is totally like a my bloody valentine song. Does that mean I am hating? No. I like it.
reviewed by: sam farzin for kuci.org |
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The riff that begins "Strike a Match" worried me, as I thought it wouldn't sound out of place for Boxcar Racer (I totally liked Boxcar Racer, too; what a tool), but thankfully they devolve into My-Bloody-Valentine-meets-Sonic-Youth style, well, drone. Their singer sounds like Kim Gorden meets Karen O, or at least from what I can hear of her beneath the fuzz, feedback, and reverb. They do occasionally overdo it - see track 3 which is literally nothing but drone - but there are some gems beneath the white noise on here. Check out 1 and 4.
reviewed by: michael for wlur |
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This is classic shoegaze, just the sort of stuff you love in the Winter: fuzzed out electronics and over-saturated guitars layering beautiful female vocals. Played loud, the title track doesn’t waste any time getting right to the point with its wailing guitars and Katherine Kennedy’s wonderful voice pushing over the constant drone. Behind the raw sound of their new album, Autodrone is a skilled band that also delivers live. Like their fellow New Yorkers, A Place to Bury Strangers, though with a completely different take on the classic shoegaze formula, Autodrone likes it loud. Because if you’re going to emulate your forefathers, you’re going to have to crank it up! They obviously draw influence from early Lush and My Bloody Valentine, yet they also put a bit more of an aggressive twist on the sound and make it uniquely their own. Seeing as Strike A Match is merely the band’s debut, you can expect to hear a lot more from them in the future.
reviewed by: jason kinnard for kexp blog |
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