Head Automatica Decadence
Decadence If anything, celebrated producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura has fashioned a career off being the funny fat kid that somehow always gets invited to the hottest parties. Beginning with his initial collaboration with Kool Keith on 1996's Dr. Octagon, he has helmed unconventional concept albums with hipster figures across the spectrum from Damon Albarn of Blur (Gorillaz) and DJ Shadow (Bombay the Hard Way) to Prince Paul (Handsome Boy Modeling School). It was out of character then for him to roll with a hipster as Daryl Palumbo, front man of middling hardcore act Glassjaw. Palumbo has
been harboring his own "hip and cool" project, Head Automatica, for some time and performed a major coup in landing Nakamura as a producer.
Nakamura as a producer.
It's hard to imagine exactly how Palumbo sold label execs on the idea, which reaches limited success despite his efforts to saddle the album with his stilted songwriting skills. Palumbo has been quoted talking up the album as an outlet for the esoteric tastes he's unable to indulge with Glassjaw, but listening to the album, you get the idea that this is his bid to secure invitations to the "cool" parties Nakamura has been frequenting for 10 years.
ical of the ironic humor Palumbo trots out as evidence of his "edgy" persona. Palumbo strikes one as the kind of guy who tries really hard to sound like he's having fun, especially when he's not.
years. Song titles such as "Brooklyn is Burning" and "I Shot William H, Macy" are typhaving fun, especially the In that vein, most of the album features a forgettable combination of So-Cal pop riffs and "cutting edges" break beats. All in all, the Automator does his best to save the proceedings, lacing the mix with enough studio chicanery to get heads bobbing, if not as automatically as all involved would have liked.
If you liked this crap,you should totally check out Handsome Boy Modeling School and Sublime's self titled album. Now that's some good tunes.
Grade:C
— Ahsan Latif
Rubber Factory
Rubber Factory Hailing from Akron, Ohio (also hometo cheesy new-wavers Devo), the Black Keys are one of the many garage/punk/blues bands to emerge recently, drawing comparisons to the White Stripes, Von Bondies, et al. But while the Stripes and the Von Bondies merely flirt with traditional blues, the Black Keys' sound is more firmly
Black Keys
entrenched in a deep Mississippi mud. On Rubber Factory, their third release in as many years, Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach continue to bang out as much noise as two people could ever hope to.
as two people could ever help. As a whole, Rubber Factory is a mix of tribal drums, guitar squalor and wrenched vocals. Tracks like "10 A.M. Automatic" and "Girl Is On My Mind" adhere closely to blues conventions with an added layer of garage grime, though the Black Keys do deviate slightly from this formula in the latter half of the album. "Stack Shot Billy" finds the Keys copping the riff from Moby's "Natural Blues" and then indulging in a wah-freakout, sounding as if Hendrix had sat in on the Derek and the Dominoes sessions. The album's most emotional track, "The Lengths," is a successful attempt at a slow blues serenade complete with finger picking, heartache and a weeping slide guitar.
heartache and a weeping sings get on there There are few surprises on Rubber Factory — just straight ahead Akron blues. Alongside current Detroit bands like Ko & the Knockouts and the Soledad Brothers, the Black Keys are today's emissaries of a timeless branch of music. It seems like the band were called to play the blues, and it plays it well.
Grade: B+
Grade: B+
See Also: The Gories, I Know You Be Houserockin
— Dave Ruigh