Autobahn

Autobahn: Dissemble – album review

10/10 - Louder Than War (John Robb)

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Whilst the modern north is a landscape of sheen over substance, thrusting shiny new towers and coffee bars, confident media empires and mythical northern powerhouses sat uncomfortably on the near post industrial past you don’t have to go far to find the smashed glass of the old north.

The north of a thousand great records, the north of red brick warehouses and post industrial malaise that ruined lives but made a great sound track. Autobahn are from Leeds and are tapping into this old north and they do it brilliantly. The modern north of trust fund indie and stadium blokes is swerved as they tap into the soundtrack of attractive sonic gloom and spectral beauty of the likes of Joy Division and the early Sisters Of mercy – those haunting landscapes of reverbed vocals, driving minor key melancholia bass lines and shimmering guitars and fractured drum beats. A late night darkness of neon and concrete twisted and drenched with that northern psychedelia that once seemed so effortless.

That they do this so well and dripping with so much emotion is to their credit. This is stunning collection of songs. A celebration of the beauty of sadness and the daring to be emotional in these irony laced times and makes this one of the albums of the year as it reminds us of just what the north once did so well but lost in the rush to modernise and reinvent itself as the er, ‘northern powerhouse’.

Autobahn reinvents the north for the now in an utterly compulsive, powerful and modern record that is like going round the corner from one of those soulless coffee bars and discovering beat up old red brick warehouse festooned with the beauty of the purple buhdlia and  a band rehearsing deep inside with their magical music floating out.

Driving, powerful and passionate – there is not one bad song on this album – it’s a complete work and a  masterpiece of tapping into addictive darkness of our past and reminding us that that we cannot escape its attractive desolation.