The Automatic
British rock band
The Automatic (also known as The Automatic Automatic in the U.S.) were a Welsh rock band. The band's final lineup was composed of Robin Hawkins on vocals, bass and synthesisers, James Frost on guitar, synthesisers and backing vocals, Iwan Griffiths on drums and Paul Mullen on vocals, guitar and synthesiser. Mullen joined after the departure of Alex Pennie, who provided synthesiser, percussion and vocals.
Signing to a deal between B-Unique Records and Polydor Records in 2005, the band released their platinum selling debut Not Accepted Anywhere in 2006, which spawned three UK top 40 singles – "Raoul", "Recover" and "Monster". The band released their second album This Is A Fix accompanied by only one single, "Steve McQueen" in 2008, which due to a dispute between the band's labels – B-Unique and Polydor – was plagued with distributional and promotional problems. The dispute led to the band withdrawing from their 5-album deal with the labels and instead formed their own label, Armoured Records, distributed through EMI.
The band released their third album Tear the Signs Down in 2010 with the singles "Interstate", "Run & Hide" and "Cannot Be Saved". Following completing promoting and touring the album in 2010, the band have been inactive.
History
Band beginnings (1998–2004)
The members first met at primary school, in the early 1990s, and formed a band at the age of 13. Alex Pennie was asked to join five years later. Originally known as White Rabbit, up until February 2005 when they renamed themselves The Automatic because they believe that music is the antidote to "the automatic life".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Automatic” is british rock band. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Automatic, British and rock, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1849852. VIAF identifies the subject as 138005480. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Automatic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.