The Automatic - This Is A Fix (Polydor/B-Unique)

If we must insist on living by categorisation, I’m not too sure into which camp I should place The Automatic. As a U.K. indie act, they fall somewhere between the fist-banging terrace-indie brigade and the sweeter, more sequencer-happy electro pop favoured by others. Aside from that, they probably most resemble the catchiest kind of US pop-punk emo bands and Christ knows there’s enough of those doing the rounds without the brits adding to the deluge. I’d heard the first Automatic album Not Accepted Anywhere, several times and was never that impressed, so I was preparing to listen to this with a heavy, largely unmoved heart.

As it turns out, the tunes bash along at a nice, rowdy pace but have enough hooky power-chord changes and catchy choruses to grab your attention over their collective clatter. Their bolshy, ‘no-frills’ drummer purrs out a different rhythmic approach on each track, too, ensuring their limiting distorto-rock style doesn’t result in them sounding too samey.

Most tracks make their stamp on you in some way another. The majority are brash and loud but ‘Magazines’ dead rings for the expansive technoid-rock of MGMT and ‘This Is A Fix’ and ‘Accessories’ feature some powerfully wrought, high-registering vocals from bassist and singer, Rob; the spit of David Essex in the ‘Rauol’ video by the way, ladies.

I was expecting to be rendered unimpressed by this. A difficult second album by a band unloved by many whose previous best was some fairly lame, childish tosh about an oncoming monster. It’s a marked improvement from their first, though and provides the same kind of balls-out, unashamed power-pop thrills that made We Are Scientists’ first album such a winner. Some tracks do make you wonder if they’re annoyingly poppy or just pretty damn good. ‘This Ship’ begins with an awful, overblown American teen-pop feel but, further in, scampering along at a breathless pace, it boasts a winning, more downbeat sequence of what seem to be three different consecutive choruses, such is the song’s catchiness quotient.

The plodding, mawkish ‘Make Your Mistakes’ is an unwelcome half-ballad that irritates rather than improves as it unfolds and if in the wrong mood, you could obviously dismiss this album as being formulaic indie-rock ear-candy.

Generally, though, with your glossy, plasticky ‘Saturday night out’ head on, you’d have to concede this is a fine pop album by a band blessed with a keen ear for no-brain ‘singalongability’ but with enough chunky garage band punch to ensure they don’t stray too far into over-produced McFly or Killers territory.