These Albums Deserve Your Attention: Mildlife — Automatic

For the rest of 2020, I will be writing a series on some of my favorite albums that haven’t garnered the attention they deserve.

At the moment, any band out of Australia gets compared to Tame Impala. While this is undeserved a lot of the time, Mildlife’s second album Automatic fits this category for the right reasons. If you found Tame Impala’s much-hyped new album The Slow Rush disappointing, the electro jazz-funk outfit from Melbourne has made an excellent palate cleanser.

Consisting of Adam Halliwell, Kevin McDowell, Jim Rindfleish, and Tomas Shanahan, Mildlife released their debut Phases in 2018. This follow-up expands on that sound, but the grooves are much more focused this time around.

It isn’t easy to put Mildlife into a genre. When I sent this album recommendation to a friend, he described the first track “Rare Air” as an “electro funk Doobie Brothers.” While the Michael McDonald vocals are absent, the guitar lead and synth riff send the notion of 70s AM rock right into space.

The back half is the true gem of this record with Pink Floyd-esque “Citations,” the 90s acid jazz runaround “Memory Palace,” and the krautrock stomp of the self titled final track.

With Automatic, not only has Mildlife avoided the sophomore slump, they’ve shown that their recording career is just starting to bloom. For that danceable astral escape we all seek right now, Mildlife have provided the soundtrack.

Automatic is available now via Heavenly Recordings.