Autolux

FILE UNDER: Pop, Noisy/Beautiful

Autolux
Future Perfect
DMZ

Future Perfect is a dense and luscious debut for this much-heralded LA trio, full of bright ribbons of guitar, bass lines that shake off their own dust and drums so humongous they'll tumble through your head forever. The first beats of "Turnstile Blues" are a slow-motion avalanche; as singer Eugene Goreshter whispers in his adolescent voice about where his thoughts take him, things get off to a real pretty start, then bottom out in a jarring wave of sound as Goreshter mews, "Shake the clouds out/Shake the stars down," and you're so caught up in the whole smooth inner space-rock trip you feel capable of doing just that. The rest of the record is just as compelling, usually setting up near the noisy/beautiful cosmic base camps built by My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth. "Blanket" has guitarist Greg Edwards going from jagged riffs (while Goreshter sings, "Lately I've been worried that it might just be okay") to head-swirling shortwave frequencies during a chorus of "I blackout/Just to keep it real." They get mellower but never lighter on parts of the record, at times in a way that will be familiar to any Elliott Smith fan, such as when they sing, "Dreaming with our heads cut off" on "Robots In the Garden."