1) Dust; 2) Another; 3) The Sides; 4) Addition; 5) Montreal
Supergroup jamming. Whatever guttural feeling that latter word just gave you, that's going to be your take on this.
Key tracks: "The Sides"
The second of John Frusciante's mad rush of albums during the latter half of 2004 was to show that the scope of the project (if you want to call it that) was beyond just him releasing new records solely under his own name. Ataxia were a short-lived band between Frusciante, frequent brother-in-arms Josh Klinghoffer and Fugazi's Joe Lally who had a few jam sessions, recorded some of them, played a single gig and then "disbanded" when when everyone's collective attention span moved onto something else. It was never meant to be anything more than friends playing some music together for a little bit, and the fact that we have a couple albums of material released under their name (both recorded during the exact same session but released years apart) is largely because at this point Frusciante recorded absolutely everything he took part in. Automatic Writing can't really be called a debut album or even a supergroup passion project: it's a musical snapshot captured by happenstance.
The five songs on Automatic Writing are all essentially lengthy jam moments. The rhythm section builds up a steady backbone for the songs while Frusciante fills the spaces in sound with his guitar, opting for more abstract, atmospheric tones with it. The whole thing has a bit of a hazy atmosphere to it, something where the mood and sound is meant to be stronger than structure. And they're long jams - the shortest song clocks at six and a half minutes while the average length runs comfortably around nine minutes or so. Most of those minutes are spent repeating the same passages over and over again, building up the mood and the tension while gradually introducing the occasional new variation. Each song features vocals (with all three members getting their turn) but it's perfunctory: you could turn each song into an instrumental without losing anything, with the singing just acting as a formless additional element more there for the melody than for the lyrics. Frusciante's also the only one with enough gusto to be a lead singer, while the other two fade into the background texturally.
Jam bands admittedly never did much for me, and while purely in terms of performance Ataxia is more than adequate, there's a point where atmospheric wallowing turns into meandering and Automatic Writing frequently crosses that line. Much of the music on it is interchangable with one another, to a point that no impression is left behind beyond the vague overall feeling of the entire record. There's of course obvious differences between, for example, "Dust" and "Montreal" (one's a build-up, the other one's a come-down), but they're only apparent while listening to the record and if you're paying attention: after the album's over, it's all merged into one big murky sameness and whatever high and low spots have faded within the general sea of mediocrity. The sole exception is "The Sides", which sounds like a Frusciante solo song: it's tonally different from the rest by being instantly more driven and dynamic, it has some progression, evolution and change, Frusciante's voice is dead center and invested, and it sounds like it actually has a goal and a purpose. It's close to great and its explosiveness is a far cry from the rest of the album - if there's one thing to take away from Automatic Writing, this is it.
The whole point of Ataxia was for three friends to lose themselves in music for a while and the recordings were never a priority, and much like with most jam sessions the main resonance the music carries is the harmony between its players and the feeling of everything syncing together between the three individuals. For me listening to jam sessions inevitably makes you feel like an outsider sitting by the side and not invited in. What's being observed may be impressive in one level or another, but the magic that happens doesn't come across if you're not actually one of the people playing. Automatic Writing is that to a tee. If you're coming across this because you're binging through Frusciante's 2004 project, this is the dud of the lot. If you're listening to this beyond that context, I'm mainly just wondering why.
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