And While You're At It, Tear Down Any Proof This Ever Existed

Originally posted on 14/3/10

Tear the Signs Down - The Automatic - Album Review

Opening singles from albums can be interesting things. They can be the one good song that a band actually produces, put out first so that the hype surrounding that will generate more album sales (see Fireflies - Owl City). They can be a taster of things to come, the first single masking wonders in greater quantities (see Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors - Editors.) The Automatic have been a band who managed to fulfill the latter criteria with their first two albums. With Recover from Not Accepted Anywhere (even though Monster got them noticed), and Steve McQueen from This is a Fix, The Automatic delivered singles that were representative of the rest of the album, and it was good. That was why, with Interstate being the first from the third album Tear the Signs Down, that I was worried. Interstate is awful. A boring chorus indescernible from the rest of the song, coupled with absolutely no energy or good riffs found before.

But perhaps it could be one of those other types of lead single, the one that's a sort of cover for an album that's far superior listened to as a whole?

Alas, no. Like Day & Age by The Killers, from the very first note of opener Insides, you know this isn't going to be good. A song that's bland when you're being kind, it simply sets you up for the rest of the album. There are absolutely no standout tracks on it, no standout moments even. Something like List that finishes with a weird string section just smacks of running out of ideas, and you can tell they're low on imagination throughout the rest anyway. From a vocalist in Rob Hawkins whose singing, whilst being a bit 'moany' at times, was once strong and angst-ridden, this is woeful. Take the chorus of Sweat Heat Noise (poor grammar as well as music). Here is something which is evidently supposed to be strained to emphasise the feeling behind it, all he ends up doing is sounding like his balls are in a machine vice. It's whiny claptrap, and something that deserves no place on an Automatic album.

This lack of energy could of course be explained by the lack of Alex Pennie, a man who described himself as "an annoying little man screaming on our record." Self deprecation aside, don't let his guest appearance on Never Mind the Buzzcocks fool you. He added the oomph to this band that gave them an edge over the synth-indie acts that were boring everyone to death in 2006, he gave them something different that hooked you in. While he wasn't in the band for 2008's best album This is a Fix, he had been there when a few songs were written, so there was still some of his spirit. The inclusion of a 2nd guitar for album #3 however seems to have taken away a dimension rather than added one, as all you get is tuneless droning. This is not the band that won so many hearts with their previous work.

An example of how generic the music is comes with closer, Tear it Down. In Heavy Rain, there is an instance in the prologue where you can turn on a CD player, and have it play what is essentially a 20 second loop of nameless music, like you get in The Sims. The intro to Tear it Down sounds exactly like this. Don't forget a song like High Time, something which is probably supposed to be a departure from the rest of the album, but ends up just sounding out of place, boring and outright weird.

Ultimately, Tear the Signs Down is awful. I had high hopes for this album being one of the best of 2010, and it has failed like Matthew Jones in an advanced physics exam. It is a disappointment, and without a doubt, not what this band are fully capable of.