There’s a cold, unfeeling place where young entrepreneurs enter as the “World’s Best Entry Level Employees” and exit as cash-chasing nightmare bosses. And Automatic just captured that hell in a lone, shiny “Skyscraper.”
The Los Angeles band dropped a video to accompany their single “Skyscraper” on Monday (June 13) ahead of their forthcoming album Excess, due out June 24 via Stone’s Throw. The Alex Thurmond-directed vid conveys a detached corporate dystopia where morale plummets with the stock market and “every dollar gets you off.” Her carefully-place visual gags — such as a “please no crying the lobby” bulletin — match the caustic bite of lyrics like “No country or cause / You’re lost in the fog / Your skin is so tight now / You can’t move at all.”
“’The pitfalls of capitalism and corporate life can be easy to fall into,” shares Thurmond. “American Psycho and Office Space were both points of reference, the glorification of monotonous tasks and success measured by climbing the corporate ladder. Those movies have such an over-the-top, satirical quality that really matches the tone of the song, and it was fun to play that up.”
Enter the 100th floor of Automatic’s imagination below, or fork over your cash to pre-order an “eco-mix” vinyl copy of Excess.