Sextile + Automatic

Some bands find their groove and stick to it while others choose to reinvent themselves and keep on moving. Sextile can attest to the thrill of an ever-changing road map. The LA duo comprising Melissa Scaduto and Brady Keehn ply their trade with a lust for life and a love of everything from no wave to hardstyle, having merged some of these influences on their striking 2023 debut for Sacred Bones, Push.

The group’s new LP, yes, please., fuses anarchic electro fire with raw personal recollections —and enough beefed-up bass to bust a speaker or two. yes, please. is an album of contrasts: a vulnerable record that bares its soul as much as it revels in excess, showing just how far you can push your sound when you shake off your inhibitions. Together, the pair betray a confidence that never wavers, making a bold splash on the speedy intro with a rave siren cut from a ‘00s New York house party. Seemingly by the same token, the unruly spirit of electroclash stalks the yes, please. building, flashing its ID on the cowbell-peppered thunderbolts of “Freak Eyes” and “Rearrange”, and turning in a scuzzy dancefloor bomb with “Women Respond to Bass.” High on endorphins, “Push-ups”—which features vocals from Jehnny Beth—is pure muscle music, fortified by hoover bass and fleshed out by synths that hammer as hard as lumps of hail on a glass roof.

AUTOMATIC

With their second album ‘Excess’, Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, lead vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon-Gaines (bass) — synthesizes a new strain of retrofuturist motorik pop.

It’s often said yesterday’s science fiction reads like today’s grim reality. On their new album ‘Excess,’ Automatic channel both. The LA trio’s second album for Stones Throw rides the imaginary edge where the ‘70s underground met the corporate culture of the ‘80s; or, as the band puts it, “That fleeting moment when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream all for the sake of consumerism.”

Using this point in time as a lens through which to view the present, Automatic takes aim at corporate culture and extravagance, weaving deadpan critiques into cold wave hooks. The album’s overarching themes of alienation and escapism emerged as Automatic wrote ‘Excess’ together, fleshing out songs before decamping to the studio for sprint recording sessions with producer Joo Joo Ashworth (Sasami, FROTH).

On “New Beginning”, they reject the false hope of leaving behind a scorched planet in search of “a better place”, at a moment when the ultra-rich are eyeing manned space travel: “In the service of desire / We will travel far away”. Imagining the “nihilism and loneliness” of attempting to escape the planet once unchecked consumerism has reached its logical conclusion, the song pictures being “stranded in a space-void with no connection to Earth or humanity.”