This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Kris Roe is too young to be so disillusioned. The Ataris singer isn’t even 25 and already he’s figured out that love stinks, friends betray you and life almost never turns out the way you want. But he’s also smart enough to know nobody likes a whiner.
So on this fourth album from his earnest pop-punk outfit — not to be confused with German techno-anarchists Atari Teenage Riot — Roe leavens his jaundiced tales of ruptured romance with the sort of smirking wit and real-life details that give his lyrics an intelligence and intimacy several steps above the usual sophomoric yuks of punk these days. (Anybody who can come up with the couplet, “Life ain’t all that bad / Even if Henry Rollins is your dad,” gets a passing grade from me.) Roe is equally precocious as a songwriter, setting these desperately yelped lyrical pearls into hyperactive beats, delicately clanging guitars, blatantly poppy melodies, tender keyboards and glockenspiels till Bruce Springsteen wouldn’t have ’em. If he keeps it up, he might be the next great punk songwriter. Even though he’s too young to be so damn talented.
