Autolux Melts Faces at Third Man Records

One glance at the YouTube comments for Autolux’s latest single, “Soft Scene,” betrays a divided community. Known for bendy guitars and layers upon layers of buzzing feedback, the Los Angeles trio has edged closer to modern, clean electronic bombast than the dream of the ‘90s. Which made us wonder: Which version of Autolux were we going to get in The Blue Room at Third Man Records on Saturday night?

As it turns out, the screeching anonymous panic from middle-aged guitarists was largely for naught. Surprise, the Internet is populated by ding-dongs! We settled in with a beer just in time to have our faces collectively melted by the opening chords of “Subzero Fun,” off the band’s brilliantly shoegazey 2004 debut, Future Perfect.

Indeed, a majority of the band’s 11-song set and live-to-acetate recording sesh came straight from Future Perfect, with tunes from their upcoming Pussy’s Dead (out Friday) peppered in for good measure. Once the needle hit the cutting lathe, the band shed their guitars for synthesizers, and drummer Carla Azar climbed onto her drum stool to thump through “Soft Scene,” a song with defiantly German aesthetics, sounding more like a stab at Kid A than Loveless.

Here’s the thing about Autolux: The soul of that band isn’t in the guitars; it’s in the drums. Azar is one of the most precise, well-oiled drummers we’ve ever seen live — she’s practically a machine with jazz chops, which makes the addition of drum machines to the equation feel weirdly organic. Sure, it was great hearing those old tunes and watching the band thrash through layers of melodic noise, but the real show was behind the kit.

That’s not to say that guitarist (and sometimes Failure member) Greg Edwards and bassist Eugene Goreshter were slouches onstage. The two were at their best during songs like “Blanket” and “Plantlife,” building towering monuments to fuzz pedals then tearing them down, even as the lathe engineer ran out of acetate to etch. The cathartic feeling of hearing “Turnstile Blues” at maximum volume carried us out of Third Man and into the night, where a thick line had already formed to buy the Black and Blue series LP and, soon enough, relive the experience.