The Ataris – Look Forward to Failure – Review

The Ataris

Look Forward to Failure (Fat)
by Scott Hefflon

Steppin’ up to the plate with a six-song, 15-minute EP, The Ataris strut their stuff for Fat with the magical lighting of production whizzes Bill and Stephen of The Blasting Room (don’t these guys sleep?). While I’ve never fallen over myself trying to find an Ataris CD, I just might in the near future. For fans of MxPx and all that dippy love punkpop, The Ataris do it damn well (though they sound more like Lagwagon). You don’t wanna beat ’em up for being such sissies (ya can’t get near them cuz the guitar crunch pummels you back), yet they’re definitely fitting for any soundtrack to a movie starring a skateboarding hopeless romantic who’s really sweet, but the cheerleader he’s pined away for most of his life just doesn’t realize it ’til she breaks up with her meathead boyfriend and all her friends ostracize her for even talking to someone not “in the circle.” (Un)fortunately, there are plenty of these movies, so The Ataris are a theme song waiting to happen. Peppy, touching, wonderfully-produced, and catchy as a cold, Looking Forward to Failure is a short-but-sweet calling card. The simple brilliance of including “da-da-da”s similar to the “sha-na-sha”s of The Brady Bunch’s “Time to Change” in the love letter, “My So-Called Life,” is pretty representative of the subtle dorkiness of these love-struck lads from Santa Barbara.
(PO Box 193690 San Francisco, CA 94119)