Featured band: The Ataris

The Ataris say so long to their former guise and welcome a new lease of life...

Original band members Kristopher Roe and John Collura tell Music News how a new line-up helped create their most honest album to date.


"These last couple of years have been the most soul searching, hard, painful years that I’ve ever gone through," confesses 30 year old Kristopher Roe who fronts the band he started over ten years ago. It’s been four years since the band released their million selling album 'So Long Astoria' and a lot can change in that time. For The Ataris, it was fateful.
"Once we’d finished touring 'So Long Astoria', I felt like we were over it. We were just tired of doing what we were doing, feeling limited in what we could create," he continues, pinpointing the band’s former line-up as the crux. Grouped with a drummer who would "just show up and play" and a musically-challenged "prop" on bass, Kris and guitarist John Collura realised they were miserable, not only sharing a tour bus with their bandmates' "bad habits" but their distinct lack of passion, too. "And it would have been the end if we didn’t just go on and do things that we felt were honest in our heart."

Anxious to evolve and inspired by old shoegaze bands, Kris and John took a more daring, innovative approach to songwriting and ditched the deadweight for new recruits Paul Carabello (guitar), Sean Hansen (bass) and Shane Chikeles (drums), three capable, "great musicians" who they’d met jamming at a friend’s studio in New York. "All of a sudden it was a collective unit carrying the band," says Kris now relieved of the responsibility, and the official seven-piece - including Angus Cooke (cello) and Bob Hoag (keys) - took to an old house in the valleys of Los Angeles to create their fifth studio album 'Welcome The Night'. With legendary producer Nick Launay (Nick Cave, Talking Heads, Silverchair) at the helm they recorded the whole album as live on analogue tape capturing the vibe, energy and all the errors. "Those mistakes and that honest feeling that we had when we all just played together was something that I didn’t hear from a lot of other bands, especially American bands because it’s so homogenised and contrived right now," admits Kris who, no longer caring for radio play or guaranteed sales, just wanted to produce a record that sat alongside the music they all listened to such as My Bloody Valentine and Radiohead. It was a conscious departure from their previous work and tracks 'Not Capable Of Love', 'New Year’s Day' and 'Connections Are More Dangerous Than Lies' brought a much heavier sound to the collection but their confidence and satisfaction grew. This was the first true representation of The Ataris and marked a fresh start for a band close to breaking at the end of 2003.

Another significant move was dropping their first major record label in June last year. As personnel rapidly declined at Sony’s Columbia Records, the band initiated their own departure, thus delaying the album release but eventually providing them with the artistic freedom they craved. While Sony had notably made The Ataris more accessible, they had also pulled their strings too tight, the final straw being the release of their now infamous cover of Don Henley’s 'Boys of Summer', an accidental single thanks to widespread radio exposure. Feeling uncomfortably numb, "lumped in with safe bands" they hit the road with two very alternative, 'unsafe' bands - Cursive and Planes Mistaken For Stars - by way of distancing themselves from make-up adorned pop acts. "Sometimes bands don’t know what to do (in that situation) and a lot of times they try and rebel back out of it and do something drastic," says John drawing on Nirvana’s In Utero as a classic example of rebellion. "Maybe only musicians can understand when you don’t play that hit song." Kris certainly does: "Everyone can’t leave your show feeling like they got everything they wanted. I feel like a complete selfish bastard but I don’t want to put on a show that’s completely predictable either."

Older, wiser and heading up their own choices The Ataris appear to have successfully outgrown the pop-punk tag that became an albatross around their neck. With the backing of their own label Isola Recordings through Sanctuary Records, they've produced a raw, in-depth and inspiring long-player that courts a little more danger and is set to amass a new breed of fans. John reckons "when you’re pegged in that pop-punk genre there’s a certain element of fans that would like to write the rulebook for you: 'You can’t write a song like that!' 'You can’t dye your hair!' 'Are you wearing a scarf now?'". And referring to commentary on the band's My Space page Kris concludes: "There’s a token couple of kids still fucking stuck in 2000 who think that shit is still inspiring. I feel very bad for them!"


'Welcome The Night' is out now.

The Ataris play the UK in April and May. Click here for details