With age comes maturity, and Welcome the Night, the fifth effort of Kristopher Roe's the Ataris, definitely is a mature album.
While the album maintains a sophisticated sound, it is hard to believe that one is not listening to a pop rock group from the '90s. Their music remains rooted in the past, and their new album merely hangs on the coattails of bands such as the Foo Fighters and the Starting Line. The Ataris are able to produce a nostalgic feeling; however, this album is easily forgettable and unable to stand the test of time.
The album kicks off with the sounds of grown up angst and melancholy in a reflection of past relationships and life in the track ""Not Capable of Love."" Roe continues the overall feeling of nostalgia by exclaiming in the chorus that ""I'm not capable of love / that kind of love / that I felt when I was twenty one."" While the chorus is catchy, the song ends abruptly making this track easy to forget and anything less than inspiring.
To give Roe credit, his deep, sorrowful voice generates an intended lonely, warm feeling. The band is able to accomplish this beautiful nostalgic presence in the track ""When All Else Fails It Fails."" Roe describes his past love by pleading ""You'll forever be an angel / in a sun dress blowing in the sweet September wind. At least that's how I choose to remember / and in my heat you'll never love again.""
While the projected sound and background instruments are unable to leave a mark, the lyrics in tracks like ""When All Else Fails It Fails,"" ""Secret Handshakes"" and ""Begin Again from the Beginning"" are crafted out of poetry. The meaning and words are beautiful and endearing. However, the band's inability to unite their singing and instruments with their lyrics leaves their album feeling disconnected.
The entire album suffers from the feeling that the listener has heard the same song somewhere else. The sound does little to excite, which keeps the band from progressing. Tracks like ""The Cheyenne Line"" fail to produce unique sounds and are only able to linger in the back of the mind as a pleasant elevator sound.
A highlight of the album is the unifying title Welcome the Night, which represents the overall feeling produced of loneliness and desperation. The night comes to signify a time for people to reflect over past memories.
Welcome the Night reflects past memories and uses nostalgia to portray being alone and melancholic. However, their inability to create a lasting and distinctive sound will make this album merely a memory. While this album is definitely not terrible, the Ataris have created a sound that will only reside as background music against the other powerful bands of the rock world.
