Automato: self-titled

If you want to make some kind of racial point out of Automato’s debut album, I won’t stop you. There’s certainly some black/white cognitive dissonance here: a white, Ebonics-slinging MC representing the Upper West Side, fronting a non-African-American guitars-and-keyboards band which pumps out beats more influenced by hip-hop than rock (though not by much). All the elements are present to revisit the great race/rap brocade, for those inclined to play such a parlous parlor game.

I am not so inclined, however, and neither is Automato’s MC, Jesse Levine. Racial issues hardly ever factor into his lyrics — and why should they? Levine has a broader thematic reach in mind. Topical issues (the likeness of Dems and Republicans, the passion of the W) are intelligently broached but merely skirted, thank the gods. A new, younger incarnation of Rage Against the Machine’s heavy-handed puritanism would be too much to handle, even in these difficult times. Instead, Levine’s talking points include rough sex, moving out of his father’s apartment, a spiritually rejuvenating acid trip, and the death of his mother, all of which are relayed with smarts, confidence, and youthful humor. “All I ever wanted was truth, peace, harmony, and anti-gravitational boots”, goes the chorus to one song. Somewhere, Aesop Rock is turning the color of Marvin the Martian with envy.

What makes that particular chorus even more memorable is the simple, subtly off-kilter chord progression that drives it — just three quick jabs at the keyboard, none of which are power punches but all of which connect. Automato‘s best tunes are propelled by similarly unobtrusive live-band rhythms. The beat behind “The Single” at first sounds as if it were recorded in a cave — all echo-y drum thwack and single bass note rrreeesssooonnnaaannnccceee — but Levine and the band gradually expand the song into a downright energetic ode to “soul music”. “If it ain’t soul music then it ain’t my music”, rush-raps Levine, and you’ve gotta figure the “soul” in question isn’t merely the Motown he used to sing on the 1/9 train as a little boy.

Like the Roots on their first couple albums, Automato occasionally run into problems making their music sonically distinct from track to track. “Walk into the Light” plods along way too torpidly, especially for a single. The album ends with four minutes of jamming, if we can call it that, which is utterly funkless doubletime synth-shriek. But that’s all sweetly redeemed by Automato‘s finest three-song stretch. “Hollywood and Vine” gracefully and, yep, unobtrusively jiggers with rhythm, shifting the tempo to fit the lyrical content. The frantic verses recreate an interrupted dream of weaving through traffic at eighty miles an hour until the ground drops out from beneath the wheels and Levine rushes up to chastise the argot of A&R guys. But then, the beat slows down for the chorus, its tempo defined by a languidly plucked acoustic guitar, and Levine empathizes with those who “just can’t go on”. Neat trick.

The next song, “Capes Billowing”, is mostly instrumental. Its one lyric (“You don’t appreciate people till they die / then you wonder why you never smiled while they alive”) logically leads into “The Let Go”, a song about Levine’s mom, who died from cancer when he was in junior high. The conventions of rap demand that this song have a slowed-down beat — songs about dead homies always do, as do songs about your moms (think “Dear Mama”, which Levine cites by name). So if the dead homie is your mom, the bpm should be somewhere down in the Portishead/Tricky range, right? But here the beat isn’t slow at all; more than that, it’s unsententiously hard, empowering the song’s details with a bravery rarely seen in the real world: actual courage in the face of actual heartache. The depth of feeling on “The Let Go” transcends any conceivable racial barriers, whether those barriers are real or imagined or waiting to be torn down. Call it soul music.