Photo: Chris Birkinshaw
Whether it’s exuberant yet threatening yobs on buses yelling with beery enthusiasm or rock n roll spunk on your cornflakes thanks to their unorthodox GMTV appearance, there really is no escaping The Automatic. A whirlwind 12 months has seen them ascend way above the Welsh hills of their homeland: they’ve ripped up the nations vocal chords with the meteoric ‘Monster’, created festival mudbaths with their gloriously screeched-up cover of Goldigga and ascended the music press’ throne to become their crowned princes. “It has come quickly” Frost (guitar) muses, “At the same time it feels like ages. We’ve been together since we were eleven so it’s almost ten years now”, Rob adds.
This is, then, no product of the wave of three chord Topshop indie, and it shows. Rather than every word of the interview swaggered with cocksure arrogance, The Automatic seem genuinely pleased and humble of their success. Bearing in mind they’re all about 21, they’re all sweetly mature, genuine and clearly hardworking. “I guess we’ll have to prove ourselves this year and sort out our new stuff, whenever we get round to doing that. There’s a lot of pressure”, frontman Rob explains.
As well as these wholesome qualities, it’s The Automatic’s skilful genre-avoidance that has perhaps cemented their accomplishments. The key to media-darlingdom appears to be in aping whatever seems to be pasted over ‘what’s hot and what’s nots’, so they could have simply coiffed themselves into asymmetrical fringed whingers, adding fuel to the ‘war on emo’ fire. Or, perhaps, thrown in a token air-horn on the route to wide-eyed ‘new rave’ neon fiascos. Instead, however, they bravely trod the path to simple, yet original good old fashioned pop songs. Where Art Brut declared their epic intention to “write a song as universal as Happy Birthday”, The Automatic arguably achieved it in ‘Monster’. Football hooligans, prisoners, school kids and actual music fans united in 2006 to its inescapable chorus. “The actual chorus sounds like something you’ve heard before. It’s so easy to latch onto for so many age groups, the actual chorus is so catchy.” Iwan (drums) explains.
Pennie, however, attributes its omnipotence to something a little more intellectual: “Lyrically it’s quite imaginative, you can kind of make it what you want. I think it’s quite easy for people to latch onto it and make it what they think it is coz it’s so kind of vague and metaphorical. I think it’s what they call a crossover song, coz it works in indie discos and it works on the radio and it also works at football matches. The chorus itself is a metaphor; it’s not literally about a monster. It’s a song about binge drinking and club culture. You’re meant to ask yourself ‘are you a monster, is there a monster in you’.”
However, behind all successes is the ever-present whip of commercial backlash, as they have already witnessed in their short career. Despite countless superlative reviews, a certain all-colour publication seems unable to resist the occasional dig: “we had one really bad live review,” Frost shrugs. “That’s coz the reviewer was in our dressing room drinking our champagne before. He was in there taking the piss and then went and gave us a bad review!” Rob exclaims of the injustice in media Bollinger-fuelled slayings.
However, it’s not just fickle scribes bands have to contend with in the dog- eat-dog world of tight trousered indie one-upmanship. The Horrors in particular have recently proved themselves to be art school Goth kings of slagging to rival even Lily Allen in the bitchiness stakes, recently sneering that The Automatic were “bland” and “flogging a dead horse.” “I wouldn’t call our music bland, I think that there’s quite a lot in our music. I think that they come from the sort of art-school background and they re just trying to be as cool as possible. We don’t really care to be honest, if you don’t like us don’t bother with us.”, scoffs Frost. “They’re raping a dead pig”, is Rob’s addition.
Iwan takes a more laid-back stance: “I don’t really see the point in animosity to other bands, I could say I don’t really like their music but I don’t know them as people so I’m not going to say anything deliberately annoying or offensive coz that’s just a cry for attention. I don’t see why you’d be deliberately antagonistic to other people who are just trying to do what you’re doing, just make music and make a living out of it. It’s just something that goes without saying that you respect other bands and not go purposely out of your way to not do that.” Despite being the one responsible for the inhuman, deranged banshee screeches and screams that characterise The Automatic, it’s Pennie who proves to be the diplomat of the group. “You remember when people have been nice to you and you remember when people have been shit to you. They’re based on press attention rather than music.”
Whatever other bands say, there’s no denying The Automatic have a knack for a catchy song. Their perhaps ironically titled album ‘Not Accepted Anywhere’ is, in fact, so accepted that it reached number three in the charts and is now officially gold-plated. “It was pretty much something that’s meant to be a play on the MasterCard slogan”, says Pennie. Perhaps ignored, however, are the less accessible, more hardcore tracks on the record. Citing hardcore and more experimental acts like The Cooper Temple Clause as key influences, it’s easy to wonder whether acting on these has been underplayed in light of their instantly memorable singles and commercial success. Do they perhaps worry they’d go out of favour if they took a more hardcore direction? “I don’t think we’re ever going to let go of melodies so there’s always going to be a pop edge, I think the only way we’d alienate ourselves is by going completely pop and selling out. I think making music for people who don’t like music would be the only way of screwing ourselves over,” Rob says.
So, while the rest of us battle January post-Christmas blues and bloats, for The Automatic it seems that things are onwards and upwards. They’ve just released their hugely thriving Live Lounge cover of ‘Goldigga’ as a b-side (even if it was initially only the consequence of “Lack of other things to cover”) and are set to tour America to play the Warped Tour. Pennie is “quite happy just to carry on being in a band and doing what were doing”, although other members underlying plans for the future expand way beyond musical horizons. “I want to be rich” declares Rob unashamedly. Frost takes over financial planning from this point, outlining his intentions with rabid excitement: “I want to get a fish tank but a really thin one for really thin fish”. Rob sensibly explains that the fish would, of course, have to be flat, and that “They would have to turn around at each end”, before bigger and better ideas are added to their extravagant plans. “A big Crunch Corner shaped hot tub, with bath bombs in one side of it! Or a real one, you could jump in the yoghurt then jump in the chocolaty balls!” Frost adds, reaching levels of excitement akin to spontaneous combustion.
So, perhaps the only thing we really want to know about The Automatic is a step closer to being answered…what IS that coming over the hill? Well, aside what looks set to be a hugely successful, not to mention well-deserved pop career, it could well be four unassuming Welsh lads coated in Muller yoghurt and confectionary. Calm yourselves, ladies.
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