The Atari's are the sort of band that pre-teen girl rockers worship and anyone else with any decent taste in punk music, hate.
The gig was not sold out, but tiny people dressed with compulsory backpacks and baggy pants trying to look older by plastering make-up on their faces, and sucking on Marlborough Lights seemed to fill every corner of Rock City.
Arriving fashionably late turned out to be the best idea as there was no cue for the bar and the first support band, Planes Mistaken for Stars were just finishing their screaming session. Emo punk band Cursive, consisting of guitars, drums and an electric cello, was a breath of fresh air. Their sound was as emo as it gets and is definitely a band to watch out for.
The succession of increasingly improving bands unfortunately came to a halt when The Ataris took the stage, activating an ear piercing communal scream from the female dominated crowd.
They started convincingly with So long, Astoria, possibly the best song from their album of the same name, but seemed to go down hill from there. Their sound could be best described as pop punk, but for the most part of the gig they did have the tendency to sound like the-boy-band-with-guitars: Busted. Nevertheless the band, renowned in the music world for being a group of bastards, did attempt to show another sympathetic side, when they dedicated one of their songs to a girl who was hit by a car outside Rock City just before the gig. 
They continued to regurgitate their catchy tunes with lyrics covering a limited range of subjects such as girlfriends, being un-cool and hating school which seemed ironic as they looked old enough to be the parents of most of the screaming audience.
It would not be fair to completely destroy everything The Ataris do but the thing that was most annoyingly noticeable was how easy it was to subconsciously sing along to the songs. This seems to imply that they have successfully found a genre of music that is appealing to young teenagers and incidentally they are the age group which purchase the most music. So for that reason alone they perhaps deserve a little respect...
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