Words and photos by Mason Marreiros
On September 27 2026, Automatic hit the stage at Toronto’s MOD CLUB and played a set of sweetness. Touring their September 2025 album Is It Now?, the band was electric on all fronts. After a stop in Montreal the night before, Toronto’s live-music-loving crowd showed up in full.
A band that started off as a trio, who are now a duo of Izzy Glaudini and Halle Saxon since the departure of Lola Dompé, their act is wonderful. Though the band have found a touring drummer, there has been no news so far of the new trio becoming permanent.
The show was opened by Accessory, which is Jason Balla of Dehd’s solo project. Balla and his accompanying band opened the show for about 30 minutes, with a mix of shoegaze, rock, and live adapting dadaist-esque songs. I appreciated how openly flowing their performance felt, and how the members adapted and gelled together as they played.
After Accessory, Automatic came out hot with Calling It, and tightly weaved their way through about an hour of banger after banger, including mq9, Country Song, Signal, their album’s titular track Is It Now?, and Black Box, before winding down with Too Much Money, and Mercury. Lead singer, Izzy Glaudini, joked to the crowd that they know they play a short set, and they have a policy for no encores, but if they came back to Toronto later (implying after releasing new music), they would give the crowd the encore they wanted.
This show felt special to me. After discovering Is It Now? playing in a record store while on a trip to London, England in December, getting to hear the songs live and see the crowd respond to the band play was heartwarming. Automatic has about 280 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify, at the time this article is being written, and I could see that number doubling by the time the band makes their return to Canada.
Automatic’s North American tour is nowhere near close to finishing. The band returns to America in the next few days, and makes over a dozen stops before the end of October. Check out their tour dates and all relevant information at their website or Instagram.