For those about to ruck

Rob Hawkins, lead singer with The Automatic, is picking his words with care. Asked why band-mate Alex Pennie set upon a stage-invader during the Welsh electro-rockers’ Dublin show last March, Hawkins smiles ruefully.
“Pennie was in a bad mood. And that’s before the guy even got on stage. He’d been sulking all day. The rest of us weren’t much bothered by the fella. You get that all the time and you keep on playing. My big fear was that Pennie would drag him over the side. Man, he was really in a stinking mood.”

This, of course, is news to nobody. It’s a matter of record that The Automatic’s co-headline tour with The View and The Horrors was something of a nightmare. What we’re really after are the sordid details. For instance, is there truth to rumours that The Horrors tried their hardest to make everyone else’s life a living hell?
“Stuff that happens on tour stays on tour,” says Rob, laughing (yet with a glint of seriousness in his eyes). “I will say one thing though – The View were a right laugh. They nicked all our beer one night. But it was all in good spirits.”
Speaking of rucks, The Automatic’s biggest hit, ‘Monster’, chronicles a post pub face-off between members of the band and a pack of Cardiff rugby louts. What is it with them and fistycuffs?
“I think everyone has found themselves in a situation where they’ve been over doing it drink-wise and they kind of go a little crazy,” says Hawkins. “‘Monster’ is about what can happen when you get to that stage. Do we go out every weekend looking for a fight? Come on, we’re not Oasis!”
Twelve months ago, of course, it’s questionable whether The Automatic would have been invited to headline a four-band tour (Essex four-piece Mumm-Ra completed the bill). That was before they achieved a double-whammy of hits in the shape of the aforementioned ‘Monster’ and ‘Raoul’, and not to mention a name-making slot on Later...With Jools Holland.
“The bloke from Keane had come down with ‘food poisoning’ – ha, ha ha, – and we were asked to do it at lunchtime of the day of the recording,” reminisces Hawkins. “It was mental. We were in Wales at the time and had to drop everything. We crammed as much equipment as we could into a van . Then we got on the phone and tried to find someone in London who could loan us the rest of the stuff that we needed. We literally got there with minutes to spare.”
This morning, Hawkins is rather more laid back. Back in Cardiff, the band are dividing their time between writing new material and looking for a house.
“We want a place where can all hang out together, for the purposes of writing a new record.”
For their next project, The Automatic hope to reinvent, or at least, refine their sound.
“We want it to be different, very different. We’re only at the early stages at the moment, so things are still taking shape. The plan is to move it on in a fairly major way.”
Coming from middle-class Cardiff, The Automatic, says Hawkins, are less self-consciously “Welsh” than many of their countrymen.
“Wales is more like a region of the UK, like Leeds or Manchester, as opposed to a country in its own right,” he asserts.
What chance, then, of The Automatic following the example of the Super Furry Animals and releasing an all-Welsh record?
“None of us can speak Welsh,” he says. “Actually we did think about learning it because it would be quite useful when we go on tour – nobody would know what we were saying!”