AutoVaughn Review

Put your seatbelt on and hang on, AutoVaughn is gonna take you for a ride! It's always exciting as a writer/photographer/music buff, to discover a band that provides you with bragging rights. By bragging rights, I am referring to the moment when you can say, "You should really listen to <insert band name here>, they're awesome!", and not long after, that band that no one has heard of, suddenly explodes.    

Autovaughn is an unsigned band from Nashville. I discovered them while they were on tour with Cage The Elephant, in Seattle. When I was photographing their set, I found myself moving involuntarily to their music. Normally when I am shooting, I become somewhat oblivious to the sounds as I enter my little zen-like world. I have no idea what songs they were playing, but whichever ones they were, they sucked me in like a draining bathtub. I had to remind myself to keep shooting instead of watching them play.  

Whether you're watching them play live, or listening to their CD, "Science Of Our Time", they have this ability to draw you in . It was a brilliant choice to make "Everything Disintegrate" the first track on the album. The vocal harmony and rhythm has almost a hypnotic effect, pulling you in and not letting go.It makes you curious to hear the next song "A Million To One". By the time you've heard the first 2 songs, the band has convinced you to listen to the whole thing. Bands like Kings Of Leon, Muse and Tool, have this same ability. Their music doesn't force feed itself down your throat, it invites you in a way that is non-invasive, and quite addicting.    

The 3rd track "Hi-Lo" is the one I find myself singing the chorus too while doing random things when no music is playing. I have actually found most of the songs stuck in my head at some point or another. Each song on the album is completely different, both lyrically and musically. These are the kind of CD's I like, where it's not one song smooshing into another, all sounding like one big hour long song about the same damn thing.      

Autovaughn's music is sexy and raw, polished and a little haunting at times. They have definitely earned their way in becoming the newest addition to my "favorites" . It's the music that you crank in your car, blast on your ipod, stream on your computer, and rock out fully to, when you see them perform it live. I feel honored to be able to experience them before all hell breaks loose and they become superstars.    

I know my reviews are a little different than most, but hey, I'm honest, to the point and won't overwhelm/bore the hell out of you with a bunch of fancy words in 30 paragraphs, just to tell you it's really really good. You can buy "Science Of Our Time" coming soon on Itunes, and Amazon. Judge for yourself.      

www.autovaughn.com/
www.myspace.com/autovaughn
www.facebook.com/autovaughn      

INTERVIEW

with Lead Vocalist, Darren Edwards      

I've been trying to narrow down who you guys remind me of musically speaking, the best I can come up with is a blend of Pink Floyd and Kings of Leon. The song "Everybody Wants To Be Loved" even has a hint of The Beatles in it. Can you describe your sound and who has influenced your music?
- The Beatles and Floyd are definite influences. As well as Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Prince, The Smiths, The Police etc. etc. etc. We try to take what we like from each artist, blend it together and make it our own as much as we can.

How long has AutoVaughn been together? Can you give me a bit of history on the band?
- We've been together for just over 5 years now. We released our first CD "Space" in the spring of 2006. It was really just a bunch of demos we decided to package up and turn into an album. We toured for a couple years in support of that album and then released our 2nd album, an EP called "The Cycles" in the summer of 2008. We toured harder and further on that release and spent lots of hours writing for what we consider our first "real" album. With this last album, "Science of our time", we actually had the time and resources to create a project that feels like an album. There are themes we wanted to repeat within the album, interludes we wrote to connect the songs and specific tones we wanted to get to capture the right sound for the project.

Does the band have a "Bucket List" of things you want to accomplish?
- Oh yeah, we want to tour relentlessly, release over 1000 songs and be the first band to play a rock show on the moon.

What's the best or most exciting thing that has resulted from touring with Cage The Elephant ?
- We've known and toured with those guys for a long time so it's hard to decipher which happenings actually came from our involvement with cage. But, we can say that we've gained a lot of new fans from these shows. Cage fans are lovers of rock and roll and they seem to be really into what we're doing so that's great.

What are your plans after the tour?
- We're going to get back into the studio and continue writing. At this point, we feel that building our catalogue is the smartest thing we can do. We've got about 50 songs we need to go through, fine tune and start putting album number 4 together.

Favorite song from your current album "Science Of Our Time"?
- I really like Everybody wants to be loved and Danger. Both for the lyrical content and the fact that they're fun songs to play live.      

AutoVaughn is really passionate about... Beats, notes, metaphysics, science, humanity, understanding, and putting them all together to create music

The one thing you should know about AutoVaughn is ...We're from the future.

AutoVaughn's favorite food is...Thai, Sushi, or Holji, which you don't have on planet earth

AutoVaughn's most embarrassing moment was...In the year 2079 when the leader of the planet Creznon banished us from the district for playing a show naked.

AutoVaughn loves the band ...The Beatles, Zeppelin

AutoVaughn is a big supporter of ...Evolving- both as a band and as a species.

AutoVaughn's favorite thing to pass time is ...We don't believe in time.

AutoVaughn 's secret talent is ...Teleporting