Future Perfect (Autolux album)


Future Perfect is the debut studio album by American alternative rock band Autolux. It was released on October 26, 2004 by DMZ and RED Ink Records. The album was produced by musician and DMZ co-founder, T Bone Burnett, and was primarily recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles.
DMZ released Future Perfect on vinyl as a two-LP set, which later went out of print. After the label's demise, Autolux reissued the album themselves in 2009 on one 180-gram LP, and again in 2015 and 2025 as a two-LP set.

Musical style

Alternative Press described Future Perfect as an album of noise pop and psychedelic rock music. John D. Luerssen of AllMusic said that the album fuses the "guitar blur" of shoegaze with indie rock elements reminiscent of the music of Sonic Youth and Ivy.

Critical reception

Reviewing Future Perfect for Pitchfork, Peter Macia found that T Bone Burnett's "laissez-faire" production complemented Autolux's "intense dynamic", allowing the band "to speak for themselves". Macia said of their performance on "Turnstile Blues": "In the first 10 seconds of the album opener, Carla Azar shames most every beat-maker with her ridiculous Liebezeit-cum-Bonham percussion. Azar's sturdy and creative drumming, provides the thrust of Greg Edwards' heavily reverbed and distorted riffs. Meanwhile, Eugene Goreshter sings whispery lullabies of escape and alienation, and his rumbling bass rattles the brain."
In 2016, Pitchfork ranked Future Perfect as the 44th best shoegaze album of all time.

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.
Autolux
Production
Design
  • Scott Bundy – photography
  • Microscopic Butterflies – artwork
  • C. Newcomer – photography
  • R5-622 – cover photography