reviving pop-punk

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The Ataris - In This Diary, So Long, Astoria (2003)

I need to let everyone know that The Ataris put out three pretty flawless pop-punk albums. Actually, prior to So Long, Astoria, The Ataris were great at straddling the line between pop and punk and they did it much better than most of the other bands on this blog. Their albums were loud and fast and they jammed twenty songs into thirty minutes. They did an acceptable cover of Jawbreaker’s “Boxcar” — and then did an adorable cover of Weezer’s “Butterfly” on the same album. They wrote anthems about smashing things during a bad break-up, about crushing on a girl with a shitty boyfriend, and about going to sweaty basement shows as a teenager. They wrote straightforward songs made specifically for mixtapes (is there a more direct line than “I just want you to know I have a major crush on you”?). They were angry at the radio for playing awful music and angry at the cops for breaking up their shows, but mostly they were just heartbroken about girls.

Kris Roe gave up on love approximately twice an album and then he turned around and offered to rob a quik-e-mart for you. Every song he wrote was the last song he’d ever write about a girl. The Ataris were the band that wanted to hang out with you and listen to the Descendents. They wanted to watch My So-Called Life and talk about how Clerks totally changed the game for independent film. They wanted to steal your parents’ flavored vodka, sit in the backseat of a car, and discuss Catcher in the Rye until you graduated high school and realized that book kind of sucks. The Ataris were a little like Holden Caulfield; angsty, occasionally distrustful, refusing to grow up, whiny, full of complaints but somehow cool because of cynicism and rebellion. Holden and The Ataris were cool when you were thirteen but then you grew up and rolled your eyes when he said phony or The Ataris said teenage riot. Which is probably why The Ataris spent so many songs cautioning you not to grow up — if you stay young forever, you’ll enjoy The Ataris forever. But! I can promise you that The Ataris, at least their first three full-lengths, are still pretty amazing. It doesn’t sound as fast or urgent as it did in 2000, but the main gist is still there.

Unfortunately, then there was So Long, Astoria. The album isn’t as bad as you remember (we can debate their “The Boys of Summer” cover all day and I will admit that I don’t hate it as much as the rest of the world because it’s catchy-as-fuck, it’s pretty fun, and it reminds me of the first time I saw them at Warped Tour and if The Ataris are about anything, they’re about nostalgia). The songs are longer than before, they’re slower and more introspective, and Kris Roe seems to have gotten most of his relationship drama over and done with and now he’s singing about his daughter instead of video games. It’s a natural progression and 90% of pop-punk bands go through it with varying results. It’s just weird to hear The Ataris sing lines like “We said that we would never fit in / when we were really just like them / does rebellion ever make a difference?” because it sounds too adult in comparison to when he yelled about the cops and how the SYSTEM supports slavery and fuck the man, let’s riot! Anyway, In This Diary was THE song from So Long, Astoria that got this band all over the radio and MTV and got stuck in your head all summer until you wanted to die. It’s not the worst song and it sticks with their obsession with nostalgia and growing up but it was pretty much completely downhill from here. As far as I’m concerned, Welcome The Night doesn’t even exist.