‘Is It Now?’ Is Here, Now

No secret here, but we’re absolutely all about the synthy, punky, dance-goth adjacent music from LA’s own Automatic. 

Halle Gaines, Lols Dompé, and Izzy Glaudini just make the music we like listening to, simple as that. And they’re all incredibly cool as well, which almost feels unfair because no one’s perfect until they are. And speaking of perfect, they recently dropped their third studio album, Is It Now, and we got so excited for it beforehand that we called them up to see what went into the inspiration, experimentation, producing, and more. 

So, how was putting the whole album together? The creative process and all that fun stuff, you know? Was there a kickstart point where it was like, hey, we should put a new album together? Or did it just sort of happen? 

Halle Gaines: We didn't really have that much time to, like, chill… We were coming off the tour, and we were back-to-back touring, and we just kind of had to carve out little moments to write. And then maybe summer of last year, we really kicked into high gear. We finished songs and recorded them between tours too. So, it was kind of jam-packed. We didn't have that much time to second-guess anything.

Was there anything different you wanted to do with this album or try, test out, or experiment with? Or maybe just new inspirations or anything along those lines? 

Izzy Glaudini: We felt a little more confident the third time around, but we were working with a new producer for this album. So, that was a challenge. But just because it's easier to work with someone that you already know. 

But it turned out really fun. And yeah, I think maybe we, as the band progresses, we get more political, overtly political, so that's like an angle I think expanded on for this album, but... Just feeling more confident and comfortable as musicians, overall.

Yeah, interesting to say that it’s overtly political. It's obviously quite the focus within the US, of course, but especially LA right now and throughout the past couple of months. Inspiration doesn’t seem like the right word, but there’s been plenty of environmental storytelling around here.

IG: Yeah, it's pretty fucked up here. The ICE shit. It's just, there’s anger and a huge mix of other emotions.

And you're all in LA. Are you guys all from here? Did you all meet here, get together here, get together here organically? Basically, how did this thing all start?

HG: I’m from Texas and Izzy's from New York and LA and Lola's from LA and, uhm, we just sort of all met through the music scene, like in various ways, and...

IG: We all kind of wanted to start a band at the same time. Without being really close before the band. We just were three women who wanted to start a band, and we didn't want to start a girl band or anything. It just kind of happened naturally. But I enjoy playing music with women more. Nothing against dudes, but it's just more fun. And we, yeah? It just kinda happened naturally, I would say. 

And was this your first outfit, or was there anything before? 

IG: Lola had a band called Black Black with her sister, and she was like 12. I think her mom said, “You need to play drums!” And so she played drums, because her family is very musical. Her dad is in Bauhaus and she's from that, like, you know, that world. Goth princess.

And I had played guitar since I was a teenager, and I played music with a lot of different people. But all of that had kind of fizzled out before this band, and I was looking for something new to start, so it was just perfect timing.

I remember reading in a past interview that you go more for taste over technique with your approach. How did you land then on what sort of noise you wanted when you all initially got together? Was that synth-heavy, drum-heavy, and bass-heavy sort of sound planned? Or did you experiment with other styles before?

HG: Well, Lola had the idea to start a band. She played drums and we had been hanging out a little bit. And I don't know how I told her that I was, like, wanting to play bass, I guess. So, her idea was to just have drums and bass. She was using, like Kleenex, I remember, as a reference, and this band Nice as Fuck. 

And not that Kleenex is just drums and bass, but just like the vibe that she wanted. We jammed a few times just like that then I met Izzy separately and she was playing guitar and singing and had a really great voice, which was great ‘cause I knew I didn't want to sing. And I felt like it’d be nice to have another singer. 

I don't remember how much Lola really wanted to sing, so then it seemed natural to add Izzy. And then we all just sort of like agreed… Or no, I guess it was kind of just Lola in the beginning mostly didn't want guitars. I liked that as a creative limitation. So then also it was like me and Lola were kind of starting fresh because she hadn't played drums in a while. And because we asked Izzy to play synth, she was starting on the same level as us, rather than guitar, where she had already advanced a few levels, if that makes sense. So, it was just born out of like our skill set and starting new together and some of the influences that, yeah, initially guided us that we still use. But it gets funnelled through our specific tastes and abilities.

IG: I think when you're not a music school person or someone that's been shredding since you were a kid, you have to copy things that you like. So, we would play a song and just, not try to cover it, but use the same notes while writing our own. Like, jamming around, ripping off the song. And then it just came out different because we didn't even really know how to play our instruments. Having poor technique is actually a good thing in the end, because you're going to be original no matter what. Now? Now we can kind of play (laughs).

Yeah, I wouldn't be too worried about that. Were there any other non-musical influences or inspirations that carried over and are still inspiring today?

IG: Movies are pretty big for us because our music isn't like verse, chorus, bridge, you know? It has this kind of droning repetitive cinematic angle and I think that pairs well with certain kinds of visuals like Cronenberg, David Lynch, Gregg Araki, and Wong Kar-Wai. 

I studied film, so film was my first love, and it's interesting because I feel like music is a much easier and less expensive way to make a mini world, the same way that movies are. So, yeah, it's kind of about translating the feelings of dreaminess, alienation, escapism. The same thing that movies do, but just in music.

What else about all this is getting you pumped up? Are you going to make cool, new zines and merch like you’ve done before?

IG: I wanted to… I was going through our group text messages and I found some funny text exchanges that I wanted to make a little booklet out of because they're kind of silly. But, aside from that, I don't think we have any zines planned. But, we're gonna bring a camera on tour and maybe capture some candid moments. That will come to our Instagram, I guess. Since, you know, content is really important.

Content rules over all, always. I’d say for better or worse, but it just seems to be for forever the worst. 

IG: You know what really annoys me? It’s that so much of the world today, and like things that are valued? It's all shaped by this one kind of group of tech white boys. Or just, like, tech boys. And I'm like, how do they get their fingers on literally everything like crypto and Instagram, and the way the algorithm will bury things unless it's a face, one person's face, and shit like that? Then there’s the trickle-down effect and how culture reacts to that and changes because people don't want to be ignored. So they feed into the values of whatever these tech nerds have decided is valuable. And it's just like, ew? Can we just all agree to rebel against this? It pisses me off so much.

It's hard to fight the tide of this shit. Like, oh, what if we don't want to post on TikTok? Why is that so important? Why do people need to have little skits? It's just crazy to think that that music has become this variety show catered towards 12-year-olds, you know? 

There's no music for adults. There's no culture for adults because we're caught in this very anti-intellectual moment in culture. There’s no proper platform, newspapers don't really do anything, and I don't know, it's a weird time.

Is It Now? is out now via Stones Throw Records. Listen to it on Apple Music or Spotify.