Sanctuary Records
2007
Welcome The Night
About This Album
The Ataris couldn't have picked a more appropriate title for their fifth record, Welcome the Night: almost every note sounds as if written at the midnight hour by frontman Kris Roe as he was locked in his apartment alone during a self-imposed exile. The guys parted ways with Columbia following the completion of Night (their long-delayed follow-up to 2003's So Long, Astoria), and wound up creating their own Isola Recordings (with distribution through Sanctuary) to finally bring the album to the light of day. In the meantime, the group inflated to a staggering seven members (including a cellist and pianist), and together the Ataris are now apparently infatuated with their Smiths collections and overall love of lush and moody alternative rock. They are hardly recognizable as the same band documenting Black Flag stickers on Cadillacs just a few short years ago, and the difference is not just in Roe's noticeably richer vocals. Layers of sweeping arrangements and dynamic buildups over lyrics of longing and snapshots of yesterday suggest that the Ataris now need to be seen as serious rock musicians free from the constraints of pop-punk. This is grown-up angst, and the opening "Not Capable of Love" is surprisingly melancholic in its reflections of life and relationships in the years since those doe-eyed beginnings.
Track List (try tracks 1,3,5,7 and 8)

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