AT THE DRIVE-IN
This Station is Non-Operational
Fearless Records
· My biggest regret may be that I never saw At The Drive-In perform live.
By now, even I’m bored with the story of At The Drive-In (ATDI). An unknown punk band from El Paso, Texas gets touted as the next big thing. They break up shortly after. The band splits to form the emo-loving Sparta and prog-metal poster boys The Mars Volta. Everybody wins. I love a happy ending.
This Station is Non-Operational is not a greatest hits album, but a handpicked anthology giving a retrospective of the band’s work. There’s the good ("One Armed Scissor"), the very good ("Metronome Arthritis" and "198d"), the bad ("Autorelocator") and a remix version of "Rascuache" that’s just plain ugly and goes absolutely nowhere. There’s also an additional DVD including all three ATDI videos and some pretty unsatisfying behind-the-scenes footage.
However, the real reason for diehards to pick up this album is for two ridiculously good, previously unreleased cover songs – The Smiths’ "This Night Has Opened My Eyes" and a live version of Pink Floyd’s "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk."
I’m a huge fan of all ATDI’s incarnations, variations and manifestations, but whether they were influential enough to warrant an anthology is still debatable (I may have to ask lame-o screamo-emo groups like Alexisonfire and Billy Talent to find the answer).
ATDI did rock for a brief moment and got people excited about music again. There was something about them that was reminiscent of bands from the ’70s – they were mysterious, intense and on a seemingly otherworldly plane, coming out of nowhere before imploding. Now, that’s rock ’n’ roll.
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