Can enthusiasm be a catch-all defence for everything? It is nice to see people enjoying themselves, isn’t it. And The Automatic are certainly that, it’s either ‘on’ or ‘off’, there is no dimmer-switch for their ready youthful gusto. They’re the kind of chaps who seem to think a point can be proved, an argument won, by simply raising their voices. Or failing that, screeching like they’ve got a biro lid stuck in their throats. Considering they’ve creatively positioned themselves at a service station somewhere between Hard-Fi, Kaiser Cheifs and forgotten Britpop bit parts Space, that kind of very obvious presentation makes them a very saleable proposition. Although key to their success is clearly that fact that they formulated a single (the marmitey ‘Monster’) just silly enough for TV and radio to be titillated by it for the necessary 15 minutes.
But do killer choruses make up for the amount of superfluous clutter and insatiable polish daubed in-between? That’s the question. Because they certainly have a handful of those. The jerky ‘Raoul’ spends a good 60% of its time just manoeuvring around the surging keyboard-driven lift-off of its chorus, ‘By My Side’ builds up to a anthemicly textured head, and the derivative Killers’ borrow ‘Lost At Home’ is actually the inverse, the verse a becoming collage of stadium drums and deep bass, the chorus a lame tread on a distortion pedal and tuneless shout-along. But with that kind of instant gratification aside, their appeal does begins to feel a little shallow.
But what is it they want to be? The volume and exaggeration of everything they do suggests it’s probably something important, and noticeable. But really, take it apart and it’s an album full of meaningless coloured-crayon sloganeering. Where’s the poetic value in the apparently endless repetition of a line like: “that’s the happiest you’ve looked all day!” (from the annoyingly titled and presumably South Park referencing ‘Seriously… I Hate You Guys’), sung like they’re marching on parliament? It doesn’t match up, their ideas feel at best underdeveloped, frivolous. Which might be the point, we suppose, but that’s an insult to your intelligence. Other repeated nuggets? “I remember someone say, there’s always a rat close by”. Yeah, we’ve heard that too chaps, but what of it? “So much trash on the radio today! He does it in a routine way!”. Way to protest, but you don’t say.