Happy Birthday, Kid!

Autolux - Transit Transit

It's been six years since Autolux's debut Future Perfect helped make 2004 one of the best years of the last decade for music. It wore its influences of the past proudly while pointing to a future golden age of rock music that unfortunately never happened. Were it released today, it would still show up the watered down crap that passes for rock these days, and, presumably, slip under the radar and not inspire anyone to do anything about it.

Transit Transit doesn't start with Carla Azar's speaker-shaking drums. She holds back for the most part this time, but she's still what elevates Autolux from solid to compelling. Transit Transit is slower than Future Perfect and could use maybe one "Turnstile Blues", but it's never ponderous and is one of the most interesting albums to come out in some time. It's Kid A to Future Perfect's OK Computer in a sense, and veers off into Sergeant Pepper's-like tangents were its predecessor was more straightforward. It will be a vital album to sustain me during the impending long, mediocre season of rock.