- Artist
- The Ataris
- Label
- Sanctuary
- Release date
- 19th February 2007
- Genre
- Rock
Bands are often like boxers. Any pugilist worth his salt talks up his skills and predicts how the fight will end before getting tangled up in a tedious slugfest. The release of a new album can breed something similar in bands, each promising an exquisite array of sonic delights – then rarely delivering on their lavish promises.
And... bam! Here are The Ataris, a US seven-piece with their first album in four years. Thwack! They're turning their backs on their pop-punk past and refusing to play live such previous hits as their cover of Don Henley's Boys Of Summer. Kerpow! Lead Atari Kris Roe has made a record he declares takes in his Anglophile influences: bands like Doves, Swervedriver and so-called shoegazers Slowdive.
Then... dull thud. You put Welcome The Night on and it's business as usual – almost. Not Capable Of Love kicks things off in a melodramatic storm of chug-a-chug power chords, pummelling rock drums and one of those "oh bugger I've left the oven on" permanently worried vocal styles. And on it goes as Roe's pre-album predictions are forgotten in a storm of exhausting bluster, non-specific spleen-venting and yet more mediocre emo. And We All Become Like Smoke and Secret Handshakes are knackered dirges that aspire to the atmospherics of Interpol (and fail to get there) while Cardiff-By-The-Sea, as well as being geographically incorrect, is pure straight-ahead Foo Fighters-esque rock. Pleasant, but incredibly ordinary.
But wait! Just as the constant stream of tedious anthemic epics makes you think you've discovered the American Embrace, track 11 comes on and... finally, you realise Roe was talking a bit of sense. Soundtrack For This Rainy Morning's shimmering guitar distortion and discordant chords kick in, with Roe singing like Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine, and The Ataris at last display their shoegazing side. The last two songs also look to Blighty but by this point, The Ataris have decided to disregard the shoegazing and ape late-era Oasis. It's pleasantly wistful, slightly bland and actually the only point where the band sound completely comfortable.
Roe has expressed that this album is "...about this whole search for hope and the questioning of religion and existential thought." Hardly fighting talk, is it? Rather than just trying to sound like Oasis, maybe The Ataris should start talking themselves up like them too.
