The Ataris posted a demo of a new song on YouTube as the rock group gets ready to work on their sixth studio album in December, with plans for a Summer 2009 release. They write, “The songs so far are sounding somewhere along the lines of our albums ‘So Long, Astoria’ or ‘Blue Skies, Broken Hearts…’.”
The demo at webcastr.com has since been removed.
The Ataris are out with the video to their new single ‘Not Capable Of Love’, from the forthcoming album ‘Welcome The Night’, out February 20th. Watch it below.
The Ataris posted the following message on their blog at Myspace on Saturday (June 10):
We just wanted to let all of our fans know that we have requested to be released from our recording agreement with Columbia Records. Since our last album, ‘So Long Astoria’, almost every key person working at Columbia has either been fired or has quit, including the President, the head of Marketing, the head of Rock Marketing, the head of Radio Promotion, and our Publicist. The final straw for us was last week when the Chairman of the Sony Music Label Group quit, the President of the Sony Music Label Group quit and our A&R guy chose not to renew his contract. This amid industry rumors that Columbia is going to be merged with Epic Records. We, like so many of the great people who have recently left Columbia, are not interested in remaining on a label that is in the process of being dismantled.
Silverstein singer/songwriter Shane Told tells Time Off magazine the band is focused on redeeming emo. “When we first started the band, we set out to start an emo band,” Told said. “Mind you, this was six years ago, before the term emo had been bastardised by Dashboard Confessional, The Ataris and New Found Glory. They have nothing in common with the kinds of emo bands we grew up trying to emulate, like the Get Up Kids and Cross Ring. So now when we say we’re an emo band, and people compare us to Dashboard Confessional, it’s kinda fu**ed up – but at the same time we know who the real evil bands are.”
The Ataris will be performing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday night. Also this week are New Year’s Eve celebrations on MTV and ABC on Wednesday night. Hilary Duff, Clay Aiken, Chingy, Ludacris and Simple Plan will be on MTV New Year’s Eve beginning at 10:30 PM, while Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on ABC will feature ‘Newlyweds’ stars Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, The Black Eyed Peas, Bow Wow, Hall & Oates, Jagged Edge, Jason Mraz, Donna Summer and 3 Doors Down, and begins at 11:35 PM.
The Ataris stopped by MuchMusic on Thursday (November 20) to premiere their new video ‘The Saddest Song’ and talk about what makes it ‘The Saddest Song’. Check out a transcript here.
Tthe Ataris are hoping to release the follow-up to their major-label debut So Long, Astoria next fall. “We’re really trying hard to get it done by one year from now, maybe October,” bassist Mike Davenport tells RollingStone.com. “We’ll probably go in the studio in May.”
The Ataris bassist/vocalist Mike Davenport caught up with Australia’s Beat magazine for a Q&A session and was asked what it meant to be signed to a record label now after making it independently. “I think that was just the next step for us,” he said. “We took the independent label thing as far as it could go. We did three full lengths, an EP and a split. All of them kicked arse – we went around, and I think we just took it as far as it could go. Like I said about how we make up the goals, after six years with the band, we thought – ‘ok, let’s see if we can take this to the next level; let’s see if MTV and the radio want to hear our music.’ Our music grows every year and with every record we make. The older we get the more mature our songwriting gets. It’s just one of those things where we’re taking each goal one by one. It means a lot – I’m glad we did it. Kris and I met with about ten major labels and I think that Columbia was the only one that saw eye to eye with what we wanted to do.”
The Ataris frontman Kris Roe channeled his reminiscences and reflections of growing up into ‘So Long, Astoria’, the California band’s major-label breakthrough album that provides the soundtrack for straddling the line between the bliss of adolescence and the binds of adulthood. “For me, this record was a step outside myself and a look at what really is important about life,” he tells Cary Darling of the Miami Herald. “In the past, I’d focus on personal relationships, and less on things other than that. Overall, in my life, the things that are important are family and friends. A few years prior to this record, I’d been living a selfish life. It was time for me to leave some things behind and just take the next step and grow up a little bit more.”
Rock acts performing on late night television this week include Evanescence, who perform on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday; Sugar Ray, who perform on the Tonight Show on Friday; and the Ataris, who perform on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday.
