Puro Instinct - Autodrama
Pitchfork 64
Shortly after the release of their hotly anticipated debut Headbangers in Ecstasy, Puro Instinct unlocked the highest level of achievement for a Los Angeles buzz band in 2011: Haunted Graffiti played the 16th birthday party of guitarist/vocalist Skylar Kaplan at Wombleton Records in Highland Park. The duo have barely released any music since, and even in the past few months, there are stark reminders of the distance between “Los Angeles indie rock in 2011” and the current day: the imminent demolition of the Smell, lackluster records from now-veteran peers Nite Jewel and fellow sister act Bleached, an eerie lack of news on Ariel Pink’s latest antics. Moreover, Headbangers in Ecstasy's then-fashionable ambition to find the hazy overlap between 4AD and MTV in the ’80s is pretty much de rigueur at this point. But the lack of hype surrounding Puro Instinct this time around actually works towards their advantage: having improved in every aspect over the past five years, they can sound new again on the surprisingly crafty Autodrama.
Puro Instinct have modernized in an important way, which is that they’ve internalized the relatively recent inversion of the long-assumed maturation process of music nerds: Slowdive, Pale Saints and the like were their teenage discoveries, now Piper and Skylar Kaplan are pop music advocates. That said, no one will confuse the Kaplan sisters with Haim; only the shawl-twisting mysticism of “Six of Swords” and “Scorpio Rising” (“Time is just a slap on the wrist/to the bastard child of Genesis”) bear the hint of Fleetwood Mac ca. Tango in the Night.
Autodrama is largely self-produced with assistance from Sam Mehran, who appears to appreciate the misty, immersive qualities of reverb as much as his former Test Icicles bandmate Dev Hynes. As much as they vouch for Katy Perry, Piper and Skylar aren’t big vocalists, and these songs aren’t meant to be belted out anyways. The melodies and production are both tiny and a little tinny, pop music more reminiscent of the hi-NRG or freestyle hits you were more likely to hear at any given roller rink in the ’90s than a hockey arena.
While Puro Instinct’s newfound confidence allows the hooks to protrude from the mix rather than recede behind a smeared lens, this also means their lesser ideas are also given more prominence. “Twelve dead Americans/Young and dumb, full of cum, holding smoking guns/Stuffed into body bags/Stack ’em up, send ’em off, let God sort ’em out” is a lyric that would be jarring in any context, more so within an album with an otherwise entirely insular focus and a genre that’s almost invariably apolitical. But even if “End of an Era” is Puro Instinct at their most #woke, the song itself is an Ambien-laced plod, the vocals just enough off the beat to sound like an irritating tic rather than an intentional choice. Inexplicably, this quality carries over to the equally momentum-killing title track.
At the very least, “End of an Era” is a disturbance to Autodrama’s surface-level shimmer and proof of Puro Instinct making an effort to provide depth. The Kaplans are just as referential as they were on Headbangers in Ecstasy, though there’s more discernible substance. Yes, “Panarchy” is a pun on the wild stereo mixing techniques on the opening track, and it’s also a nod to the concept of choosing whatever form of governance you want without limitations of geography. It’s easy to hear what they're getting at, given the Kaplans’ disillusionment with the music industry after the underwhelming performance of Headbangers in Ecstasy. The remaining emotional state of Autodrama is murkier: “What You See” recasts “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” as a DJ Khaled-esque exercise in visualizing success, while the outlook of “Peccavi” is more attributable to Homer Simpson: trying is the first step towards failure.
Somehow, these don’t feel like contradictory viewpoints on a record mostly concerned with the blowback from vulnerability. And according to the actual Six of Swords tarot card inspiring the song of the same name here, they're not. It’s otherwise known as the “Slough of Despond,” more of an emotional and physical divot than a depression. If it appears reversed when pulled, the Six of Swords signifies a choice to wallow in misery. When upright, it provides the promise Puro Instinct so deeply desire on Autodrama: being able to move forward, even in a less than ideal situation.
Fri Jul 01 05:00:00 GMT 2016Tiny Mix Tapes 60
Puro Instinct
Autodrama
[Manifesto; 2016]
Rating: 3/5
Let it be known that Puro Instinct started their career at a young age, working with Big Boys of Lo-Fi like Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore, and have now returned with a new, second full-length album that sheds some of the baggage associated with their beginnings. That is a basic, generalizing arc. It will do. This is a pretty basic review. I’m a basic writer.
Autodrama attempts to transcend the now passé auroral fuzziness of their debut, Headbangers in Ecstasy, with huge, slow, yes, dramatic choruses. And the results are mixed.
The things so enamoring about Headbangers are often not at all in evidence here. Time has passed, sure, but the sororal duo has morphed from Pinkian (Jacuzzian?) protégés (whose songs were just as good as any Haunted Graffiti project) into something more like a true 2016 pop act. While both albums easily fall into that bottomless, useless “pop” categorization, they are almost as different as one could have expected. Where Headbangers felt somehow curated, like a series of pieces locking together, thanks in part to its creepy late-night radio interludes, Autodrama is, at heart, a rather straightforward collection of pop songs.
There is a theme, namely Hollywood (and living there, growing up there, working there), traceable through the 10-song sequence, but the album feels like a scattershot attempt at giving a larger audience as many pop tunes as is feasible. This approach can work and has worked in the past, but much more common is the result we find here: a hit-or-miss affair.
Like any pop album deserving of the title, some of the songs here are those cool, crystalline, summer-defining things that keep us going through the heat and sun: “Six of Swords” is the tarot-hit that the 2016 internet’s pop-occultism needed, and “Tell Me” wouldn’t feel out of place on the radio between Rihanna and Carly Rae Jepsen.
Autodrama’s later songs, like “Scorpio Rising” and “Babylon,” however, tend to centralize and repeat (usually one too many times) huge, swaying choruses that, despite the deft, clever lyrical work (Hollywood as Babylon is a classic, immortal move done well here), lull one into an anticipatory trance waiting for the next, catchier, more mobile song. Unfortunately, that song never comes, and the album’s second half closes without having offered anything like the triple threat of “Peccavi,” “Tell Me,” and “Six of Swords.”
The huge air of drama and gravity suggest that this might just be a transitional moment for Skylar and Piper Kaplan: Autodrama feels just several adjustments away from fullness. There are no doubts that Puro Instinct have become a serious pop project, growing quite beyond the roots one might have thought the sisters would permanently call home. So it’s frustrating, then, to be already looking forward to their next move.
The Guardian 60
(Manifesto)
LA sisters Piper Durabo and Skylar Cielo made, in 2011’s Headbangers in Ecstasy, the bloggiest of all blog band albums. Their second takes its template – hazy dreampop, synth haze, slightly gothic guitar – and explores a darker Hollywood delirium. On Peccavi and Tell Me there are hints of Madonna’s early pep, but dreamy and dissipated, with Durabo intoning about “wishing fiction into fact” and urging you to “forget about tomorrow”. LA’s mystical side surfaces in Six of Swords, Scorpio Rising and the title track’s sample of the occultist Manly P Hall, while End of an Era introduces an anti-war sentiment and a delicious, doomy lassitude. If the songwriting isn’t always the match of the sheen, the best moments here – Panarchy, What You See, Autodrama – are dangerously seductive.
Continue reading... Sun Jun 26 07:00:07 GMT 2016