Frost's Birthday "Dirty Pint"
Following the 2008 Reading Warm Up show the traditional drink of many juices and alcohol is prepared
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THIS IS A FIX
So you think you know The Automatic? With their bold second album ‘This Is A Fix’, you’ll see the little band from Cardiff with the big ideas and the bigger tunes as you’ve never seen them before. And in more ways than one.
But first, an update. You’ll notice the subtle reshuffle in the band’s ranks. Away to pursue new projects is founding keyboard player Alex Pennie. In – though not as a direct replacement – is former Yourcodenameis:milo frontman Paul Mullen, adding another flank to James Frost’s guitar assault, and providing melodic counterpoint to Rob Hawkins’ vocals. All built upon Iwan Griffiths’ pummelling drums, it makes up for a bigger, fatter sound, just as dynamic, just as melodic, but simply ’more’
It was hardly news that Pennie wanted to try new things, but as testament to the amicable nature of the split, they completed touring commitments for debut ‘Not Accepted Anywhere’ in their original incarnation.
Rob explains: “Pennie had made it clear that he wanted to do other things for quite a while. It wasn’t a shock because we all knew it was happening, but still honoured all the live commitments. It was actually very smooth.”
The roots of the new line-up came in 2006, when Yourcodenameis:milo launched their ‘Print Is Dead’ collaborations project, where a selection of their favourite bands would visit their Byker Bridge studios, writing and laying down a track in 24 hours. The Automatic’s contribution, ‘The Trapeze Artist’ was an easy highlight, and the two bands quickly bonded.
But only fate could have forseen the next move, whereupon as The Automatic ranks were changing, Milo were disbanding. “It was simple really,” laughs Rob, “we needed a member and he needed a band!”
In fact, the move almost was that simple. As Paul remembers, “It was bizarre. It was just a random suggestion at first. I went in to their studio just for a bit of a jam, and within about an hour, I think we all knew that this was going to work.”
They’re all aware it’s an unusual situation, as Paul admits: “It’s weird when you’re known from somewhere else… you can’t really change your way of thinking. But it’s a good challenge to try and do that, and I think we’ve all really risen to it.”
‘This Is A Fix’ brilliantly marries the strongest elements from all four members’ backstories – soaring choruses, skewed futurist rock, gigantic riffs, moments of all out mentalism – though not, necessarily, in the way round you might expect.
One of the most out-and-out pop moments, the white-hot groove of ‘Magazines’, came from Paul, whereas a lot of the more experimental freakouts and time signatures were actually written before Paul joined the band. “It was,” says Frost, “like we’d both been moving in directions away from where we’d been and we ended up reversing. It might be difficult for people to work out which parts are by who. When we did the first album we were so young – we rushed it really. I know we’ll always write big songs and we’ll always have little hooks, but this is more who we are.”
“If anything”, continues Iwan, “the run of writing leading up to the first album was probably the anomaly. This is what the band has always been about.”
“It feels different to the first album,” adds Rob, “It’s more complete, both lyrically and musically
And bridging these two incarnations of The Automatic is lead single ‘Steve McQueen’. The song, one of the first to be written for the album, possesses a foundation of rock-solid guitar dynamics, a musty old magic to the production and a typically addictive chorus line. Lyrically, apart from motorbikes being really cool, it’s a romantic reference to growing up in Cowbridge and dreaming of a Great Escape. “It is about growing up and wanting to get out of a small town. But I promise, this is the very last thing we’ll do about that!”
‘This Is A Fix’ is an unashamedly British take on the US-flavoured Welsh hardcore scene that birthed the band. Taking a stylistic jump off from first album track ‘By My Side’, it’s all the more impressive that the band have retained their identity, as the album was produced globally –in Cardiff with Richard Jackson (Future of the Left), and in Los Angeles with Butch Walker (Hot Hot Heat, Fall Out Boy, The Academy Is, Pink) and in London with Steve Harris (Kaiser Chiefs)
It’s an album about stepping up and finding your place in the world. Not quite about growing up (the band’s average is still just 22), it’s a confident collection of songs sure of themselves and off their messages.
Take the sabre-toothed ‘Responsible Citizen’, a forked-tongue celebration of getting truly wasted. From the band that trashed a GMTV set and invented the gutbusting ‘Rollins’ cocktail (Red Bull, Jaagermeister, Magners), it’s a telling moment of self-awareness, the inverse of ‘Monster’s grim depiction of a lad’s night out on a Saturday night. “There’s some irony to it,” admits Rob, “but at the end of the day it is quite fun to get smashed. I think it’s got that inkling that it’s probably not the best thing to do, it’s about the self-destruction of it, almost celebrating that.”
That song’s opening line – “I’m tired of government warnings telling me to watch my intake,” sums up a story arc that threads through the album. Not so much a message, more a linking theme of suspicion that something insidious might be working behind the scenes. From ‘Magazines’ and its suggestion of a wider hidden agenda within the media that we all suspect, through more overt observations on songs like ‘Secret Police’ and ‘Bad Guys’.
Rob explains: “There’s a bit of a theme that stretches through the album… there’s a few references to militias, organisations that are a bit darker and there’s maybe a subversive thing going on behind the scenes that’s quite unnerving. That runs through the album and it runs through the artwork.” Although as Paul explains, “There’s no satanic messages on it or anything.”
But it does bleed through to the album’s title, which could refer to any number of fixes – the shadowy government kind, through the need to fix something that’s wrong in your world/life, to a drug, alcohol or other addiction that demands a ‘fix’ – or indeed quite simply our need for a musical one. There are even suggestions on certain corners of the internet that Paul’s addition in the band was some kind of conspiratorial record company trick. One listen to this impressive piece of work will be enough to blow those wrong-headed ideas right out of the water. Along with your preconceptions of what The Automatic were, are and will be.
The Band
theautomaticonline@yahoo.co.uk
Management
Martin Bowen - Probation Management
martinbowen@btconnect.com
Booking Agent
Mike Greek/Becky Wedlake
Creative Artists Agency
Tel: +44 (0) 208 323 8016
