Interviews: The Automatic Automatic

We recently spoke with UK-based The Automatic Automatic. The band has quickly become quite a phenomenon in the UK on the strength of their singles, "Raoul" and "Monster." (You can check out both on their Punknews.org Profile) Taking a sound that is equally influenced by bands like At the Drive-In, The Futureheads and Blur, the band will be bringing their new album to the States later this month. The record is titled Not Accepted Anywhere and is due out June 26, 2007.

You can click Read More for the interview.

You guys seem to have really had an amazing rise in Britain. How does it feel to finally be releasing your record to the Canadians and Americans? It's taken almost a year to cross the Atlantic…

Its awesome, we've been waiting for this for ages! The fact were releasing our record a year later in the States means we can devote our time to it more too, the album campaign in the UK has only just come to an end and were looking forward to crossing the Atlantic now. It'll be refreshing.

On the same note, what are your feelings about performing on the Warped Tour?

We feel well lucky to be included on Warped tour. Its going to be the perfect tour for us, I'm excited about playing with so many great bands, and in so many different places too.

For those unfamiliar with the band, can you tell us a little about how you got started?

We formed in school, like most bands I guess. We decided to make the band our priority when we left school at 18, everyone else from school went to university and we felt like we'd kinda missed out on something.

Most of them couldn't understand the idea of not going to university and thats kinda where the name The Automatic comes from. It's about thinking about your choices in life a little more, and not doing exactly what people expect of you. We got signed about a year later and just haven't really had a day off since, its been amazing!

I understand you guys used to play At the Drive-In's "Arc Arsenal" quite a bit. Does it pop up much any more? Any covers you're planning for Warped?

We played the intro of it once or twice. Normally, we do a cover of Kanye West's "Gold Digger," which goes down pretty well in the UK.

Another one we sometimes do is slightly lesser known by the audiences, Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime". I think the way we play it, you could believe it was our own, which I guess is the whole point of a cover. I hate it when bands do covers in the style of the original band.

Speaking of At the Drive-In, what do you think of the Mars Volta and Sparta? I figure every fan has an opinion one way or another.

I'm a big fan of all three actually. I don't really mind that ATD-i split up if it meant the other two bands came into being. There's a helluva lot of tunes between those five guys! We shared a stage with Sparta at the Give It A Name festival in London, it was so amazing to see them play and to be on the same bill!

Since you're quite well-known in England but almost a new band to people here, what kind of expectations do you have for the trip?

We don't know what to expect at all. Were gonna play some good shows and see what people make of it!

On the same token, what can people expect from you?

Energetic live shows, we wrote our songs to move to. You can expect an album too, 12 songs and it sounds quite good like. It's better live though.

I understand you're already planning to work on your second record later this year. Any hints on what we can expect from the new one?

Yeah I just got back from the studio today, we've been recording some new demos. Its sounding really good so far. There's more guitars and stuff - generally a heavier approach. Also its a bit maturer, we're a bit better at creating the mood we aim for. Its sounding slightly more varied, nothing that weird though, were still very much the Automatic.