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The Automatic - This is a Fix
1/5
Words: Anna Coatman
“So you think you know The Automatic?” challenges the press release that accompanies the difficult second album - This Is A Fix - of the said band. Well, to be honest, I’d forgotten all about them. To recap: The Automatic are those four fresh-faced Welsh lads who yelped the electrified-nursery-rhyme chant: “What’s that coming over the hill?, Is it a monster, Is it a monster?” that seemed to accompany every T4 programme trail during the summer of 2006.
The Automatic were part of that huge wave of commercially polished, pop-punk-rock-whatever boy bands that rose to a dizzying crescendo around 2005-6, whipping a multitude of wrist-banded tweenies into a sun-burnt frenzy, and that then crashed into nothingness not long after. The music scene has moved on since then and, in many respects, so have The Automatic. Firstly, founding key-board player Alex Pennie has left the band and former Yourcodenameis:milo front man Paul Mullen has joined. Secondly, whereas their debut album, Accepted Nowehere, was characterised by irksome playfulness and disturbing catchiness, This Is A Fix has an altogether more ‘serious’ tone. Yes, The Automatic - a band which stood out for the brazen, infantile inanity of its lyrics first time around - now seems to want to ‘grow up’.
Indeed, the songs on the new album address everything from the dissipation of civil liberties to the emptiness of our consumer society - all very admirable, of course. Unfortunately, however, This Is A Fix is irredeemably awful. Musically, the band abandons manic, stomping choruses in favour of sluggish, uninspired, generic emo-leaning rock. Lyrically, meanwhile, the attempt at political acerbity is frankly embarrassing. The track Responsible Citizen, for example, opens with what appears to be a humourless attack on cereal boxes: “I’m sick of government warnings that tell me to watch my intake…” Oh dear. Maybe it was their second album that The Automatic saw coming over the hill…
Released: 25.08.08
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