The Automatic
It’s a Friday night and cold enough in my house, let alone standing outside the Garage venue in Glasgow owing to a lack of mobile telecommunication signal. This is where we have detained The Automatics lead singer Rob Hawkins post soundcheck. I swear he is shivering but in the good name of the ULive Waterfront show on the 10th of November. He may be a tad chilly but he’s willing to have a chat to the gig going folk of Norfolk after all the band does seem to love playing the various venues of the fine city.
So you are back again?Norwich is like a home from home for us. The fans have always been really supportive, even from our early supports for the Ordinary Boys and Hard-Fi It’s been a great place to play. The venues are rammed and the crowd is always up for a great time. We brought the new line up to the Arts Centre in April and to be fair the early shows on that tour we were shitting ourselves as to how the new material would go down. But that gig was special, rocking from the word go with not only the tunes from the first album but the new songs went down a storm and we are always grateful to Norwich for providing that level of support to us.
The change to the line up has been, well almost seamless?We’d obviously worked with Paul’s previous band Your Code Name Is Milo on their Print Is Dead collaboration album which also featured Bloc Party, Futureheads and Maximo Park. The connection was already there and when his band took a prolonged Sabbatical it became a good option to, well not replace Pennie as Paul is a guitarist rather than Pennies role as a keyboardist but it fitted with our plan to change the style of music that we were developing into.The material that has become the This Is A Fix album just flowed from the first sessions that we did with Paul. The songs have a harder edge to them, a lot more energetic and very close to our live sound. I personally think it’s a lot less frantic that the songs on the first album “Not Accepted Anywhere” but we have layered the studio sound to death. It was almost like a wall of sound in the studio there were times where we had to be told when to stop because if we hadn’t we would still be in there adding that last extra guitar layer or six. Both recording and out on the road it’s been so cohesive with the new line up something that really wouldn’t have happened with the old setup.
If we can touch on Alex Pennies departure it seems to those who caught the live shows towards the end of his spell in the band that his departure needed to happen?Absolutely and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying that. It was good for both parties that we parted when we did. Pennie made it very clear well before he left that he didn’t want to be any part of the band anymore. To be touring, in which is a very claustrophobia situation at the best of times with one member who is carrying a self-destructive, almost paranoid bent towards the band he is part of is a horrible state to be in. Almost like being stuck on the deck of a sinking ship. If he had stayed there was no way we could’ve made a second album in any form let alone the one we have now made. It was impossible not to have the division that was forged between him and the rest of us and it was a real relief for all parties concerned when it was announced that he was leaving. Hopefully he will be happier now, he has a new band called Decimals who share our managers recording studio in Cardiff with us. So we no doubt will bump into him at sometime and hopefully there will be no hard feelings he was part of a first album that we are still proud of and hopefully he can look back at his time in the band that way as well.
Do you see tracks like Monster from the first album as millstones around your neck compared to the newer material?No, not at all I’m really proud of Monster. After all I wouldn’t be here talking to you now if it wasn’t for that tune. I was 19 when we wrote that and to think of all the times it is played, all the people across all ages who love the tune and the fact it means different things to them. Obviously the lyrics are aimed at the violent street culture of lads that want to fight on a night out but if through the video and the chorus the monster is something cartoonlike to a ten year old it’s no bad thing. I turn it off if it comes on the radio but we still love playing the song live and the buzz we get back from the audience still gives me goosebumps. As a live band now we are far more of the rock band we wanted to be. That’s partly because of the way we’ve developed over the last three years of touring. The addition of Paul as an extra guitarist aids that live sound making it a lot more spikier but still there’s tunes everyone can belt out back to us and we still love it to be fair our last single Steve McQueen gets just a big as a reaction live as Monster, Recover or Raoul.
You definitely showed that it was the case at the festivals over the summer were there any particular highlights?Reading and Leeds on the main stage was something else the energy of the crowd empowered us to one of our best festival gigs, the adrenaline buzz you can get from reactions like that are difficult to convey but let’s just say it’s something that is a great natural high you can feed off for the entire weekend. Headlining Glastonbury was also a privilege even if it was at the same time as the worlds eyes were on Jay-Z on the main stage as they looked on to see if he could deliver a knockout blow to Noel Gallagher. I guess we pulled all those who didn’t like hip hop, delivered a set that had them rocking and then still caught the end of Jay Z’s set and to be fair to him he proved a point about hip hop artists headlining the festival as he nailed it.
So when you hit Norwich in November it will be part of the ULive tour that hits just about all the university towns and cities of the country. I take it as you always seem to be on the road you can wait to be back out. What will you be bringing to The Waterfront?It’s a stripped down tour, we are not bringing our lighting rig on this set of dates. Musically that gives us more freedom as we can change the set around from night to night but at the moment it’s a half and half set with the older and newer tunes but we know the Norwich crowd will raise the roof and we will be only too happy to oblige with anything they want.
So will you be getting the flute out again?Why do you make that sound dirty (laughs). No you can rule out the return of my flute playing on stage. That’s unless this all goes tits up and I’ll be ringing MGMT to see if they want a flautist!
The Automatic will hit the Waterfront on the Tenth of November with Nick Harrison in support. You’ll get to hear monster and all the new songs from the rather splendid This Is Fix album if you haven’t heard it then let the gig be your introduction I think you’ll be rather pleasantly surprised.
David R. Gray.
