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Mark Mccord

The Automatic

Not Accepted Anywhere

(B-Unique)

Wales, it seems, is home to mouthy upstart bands who are either fantastic or absolutely hopeless. Witness the once-peerless Manic Street Preachers for an example of the former and the lamentable Stereophonics as one of the latter.

It's apt that in a land of extremes - extremely beautiful landscapes, extremely sickening history of oppression by the English - rarely do the bands of the valleys slot anywhere in between those classifications. Until the Automatic came along, that is.

Mixing emo-thrash with pop sensibilities, the teenage foursome from Cowbridge, near Cardiff, would be up there in the 'next big thing' bracket if they didn't have a tendency to lapse into novelty-style whimsy.

Take their summer hit single, Monster, for instance. Great riffs, nice punky growl and then the chorus: 'What's that coming over the hills?/  Is it a monster?'.

Were it not for the rocking instrumentation, it would sound as  if it was made for three year olds.  It's more than a bit daft - it's almost worthy of fellow countrymen, stoned-rap novelty act Goldie Looking Chain, or worse, the ridiculous Wonderstuff.

And it doesn't stop there, either. The album is full of silly little half-asides, in-jokes and puns that don't really work.

It worked for the wonderful Cud in the mid-1990s, who made a career out of subtly melding laughable lyrics to rollicking tracks, sending up the traditional pop blueprint in the process.

With the Automatic, though, you get the feeling that the songs weren't meant to end up this light and kooky - that despite their best efforts at recording a rocking record, they accidentally managed to turn out the year's best comedy album.



The Automatic