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Head Automatica
DECADENCE
(Warner Bros.)

The first three songs on Head Automatica’s debut CD — a strange-bedfellow collaboration that teams Glassjaw singer Daryl Palumbo with hip-hop beatmeister Dan "The Automator" Nakamura — are as close to perfect as anything that’s come out of the current dance-punk revival. Palumbo’s hard-core-trained vocals give the jolty, synth-driven "At the Speed of a Yellow Bullet" the kind of urgency that lesser neo-new-wavers like the Fever spend their nights dreaming about. "Brooklyn Is Burning" has the Automator dropping ’70s soul samples under acid-washed guitars, while "Beating Heart Baby" sounds like At the Drive-In pumped through a postmodern-disco sound system. Those tracks are so good, in fact, that the rest of the album pales in comparison. Palumbo and the Automator are obviously aiming for a crossover sound that can rock clubs, SUVs, and heads simultaneously, but — after those first three songs — they succeed only sporadically. "Please Please Please (Young Hollywood)" dissects the dirty dance floors of Los Angeles but sounds like a Filter reject; "Head Automatica Sound System" unfortunately revisits the dying embers of rap-rock. Consistency isn’t Head Automatica’s strong suit, but creativity is clearly high on their list. Too bad more of their experiments didn’t work as well as the disc’s first three tracks.

BY JEFF MILLER


Issue Date: September 3 - 9, 2004
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