Auto, by Wendy Eisenberg

Auto

by Wendy Eisenberg

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mingusforlife This album came out in 2020 and in hindsight, I wish I'd been listening then. I probably would have escaped the following years with a little more soul.

There are some tremendously good songs on this album. Everything from AOB on is fantastic. Their singing on Genre Fiction is just exquisite. Not to mention the other songs that just keep growing on me.

Favorite track: Genre Fiction.

Laura Fisher Impossible to choose a favourite song, tho this one resonates with the alien in me exploring earth/deciding what to bring back. This album is important beyond any words of mine. Your life is missing if you haven’t. Favorite track: AOB.

Dwight Sheppard This album just floors me. It’s expressive, inventive, exact, and visceral. Total brilliance! Thank you, Wendy.

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
100% Black Virgin Vinyl 12'' LP. First 200 mail orders receive 8.5x11 inch special edition insert created by Marta Tiesenga.

Includes unlimited streaming of Auto via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

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Purchasable with gift card

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Wendy Eisenberg - Auto Compact Disc (CD)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Front cover photo by Keith Haley Robitaille
Back cover photo by Luna Galassini

Includes unlimited streaming of Auto via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

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Wendy Eisenberg - Auto Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
Please note: We are currently unable to accept mailorders from Australia or New Zealand because of a post office ban on sending packages.

Includes unlimited streaming of Auto via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

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Auto Highlighter Yellow Limited Edition 12'' Vinyl LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
** Realized we have a few copies available. This has been sold out on Bandcamp for a month, so making them available today to celebrate election promise!**

Limited Edition Mail Order Exclusive pressed on Highlighter Yellow Vinyl limited to 100 copies. First 200 orders (including black 100% virgin vinyl) will receive an 8.5x11 inch special edition insert created by Marta Tiesenga.

Includes unlimited streaming of Auto via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Download available in 24-bit/44.1kHz.

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1.	I Don't Want To 03:12	info	buy track
2.	Centreville 02:05 video	info	buy track
3.	No Such Lack 03:16	info	buy track
4.	Far Be It 02:43	info	buy track
5.	AOB 02:49	info	buy track
6.	Urge 03:16	info	buy track
7.	Futures 02:29	info	buy track
8.	Happier 01:25	info	buy track
9.	The Star 03:22	info	buy track
10.	Genre Fiction 03:14	info	buy track
11.	The Moon 05:15	info	buy track
12.	Slow Down 05:06	info	buy track
13.	Hurt People 02:34	info	buy track

about

Drawing the connections between Wendy Eisenberg’s releases feels like undertaking a wide-ranging investigation. Albums of wildly inventive guitar, tempo-shifting avant rock and curiously leftfield pop fit together as offerings of Eisenberg’s curious mind. On Auto, their most innovative and inner-reaching album yet, Eisenberg explores emotional, subjective truth, and how it interacts with an objectivity no person alone can grasp. Inspired by the solo work of Mark Hollis (Talk Talk) and David Sylvian’s Blemish, with playing skills that have already seen them climbing Best Guitarist lists and an unvarnished vocal immediacy, Wendy Eisenberg has created an album of subtle display that resonates with maximal impact.

Auto has multiple meanings. First, automobile: “A lot of these songs were written about and mentally take place when I’m in the car on my way to gigs,“ says Eisenberg. Immediate melodies came to them on these trips, to which they’d later add complex guitar parts. And Automata: “I make myself into a machine, which is why everything that’s played is precise.” Finally, they frame their work in the literary technique of auto fiction, “the semi-fictionalized presentation of the self in a narrative form of growth,” as Eisenberg sees it.

The album served as a means toward working through emotional conflicts from adolescent trauma and PTSD, and dissects the dissolution and conflict that led towards the breakup of their former band. With much of it written while its events played out, Auto faces the grief of losing what one thinks is their future while experiencing a dramatic reshaping of their past; it delves openly into the limited nature of one person’s narrative.

Written on the last day Wendy spend in their childhood home, opener “I Don’t Want To” manifests the wounds of losing innocence (“I don’t want to / you can’t make me / it’s only natural you’d try.”) Of “Centreville,” a direct address to the person who assaulted them, Eisenberg explains: “The song literally forces me to alienate my body from my singing self. The complexity of the guitar part is exercise enough for me to have to almost ignore my body… singing a bitonal melody above it is a presentation of the mind-body split.”

After making a few efforts to record Auto, Eisenberg ultimately chose to collaborate with childhood friend Nick Zanca, who contributes electronic elements and production. Mirroring the personal and organic offered by Eisenberg, synthetic sounds form a kind of boundary or context for everything. They “sound like commentary on songs that were written from an organic or subjective perspective,” says Eisenberg. Their place on the album is integral for Eisenberg’s goal “to outweigh the subjectivity of normal singer-songwriter guitar songs with the objectivity of electronic sound.”

The album’s center point is “Futures,” the only direct expression of anger on Auto. Lost post-Birthing Hips, Eisenberg explores their desire for self-fulfillment when stuck in repetitive cycles. The song breaks into a full discordant metal attack over the lines “Another weekend, oh / another contract, oh / another basement show / I didn’t notice that I didn’t notice… that my enemies are finally real.” When stuck in repetition and habit, rage is often the most honest emotional response, an acknowledgement Eisenberg builds into the flesh of the song.

Now living alone, they see liberation from guilt as a double-edged reward: “it’s also maybe a sign I’m not really existing in the world as much as I once did.” On closer “Hurt People,” Eisenberg attempts a few steps towards acceptance and equanimity. “When I win I win a lot / And when I lose I lose alone / But now I don’t hurt people quite as much,” they sing. Auto encapsulates the fullness of its creator’s experience. In all of its intention and precision, we emerge on the other side with a very tactile feeling of loss and understanding.

credits

released October 16, 2020

Wendy Eisenberg: guitar and voice
Nick Zanca: synth, electronics, wurlitzer, organ, field recordings, tape objects, singing bowls, cello, electric bass on 4 and 7
Austin Vaughn: drums and percussion on 2,3,4,5,9 and 10
Nick Neuberg: drums on 6, 7, and 9
Nick Bisceglia: electric bass on 3,9,10,11
Brittany Karlson: upright bass on 6 and 9
Produced by Nick Zanca
Mastered by Simon Lancelot
Front cover photo by Keith Haley Robitaille
Back cover photo by Luna Galassini
Special edition insert by Marta Tiesenga
Engineered by Peter Atkinson at Blue Jay and Nate Mendelsohn at Figure 8.

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Ba Da Bing Records Providence, Rhode Island

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Also carrying releases from our sister label, Grapefruit Records.

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Auto

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Wendy Eisenberg - Auto 100% Virgin Black Vinyl 12'' LP Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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Wendy Eisenberg - Auto Cassette Cassette + Digital Album

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Auto Highlighter Yellow Limited Edition 12'' Vinyl LP Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

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Streaming + Download

$7 USD or more

Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

$20 USD or more

Wendy Eisenberg - Auto Compact Disc (CD)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

Wendy Eisenberg - Auto Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album

Auto Highlighter Yellow Limited Edition 12'' Vinyl LP
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album