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Name Kristopher Roe
Best known for Being the singer, songwriter, and backwards guitar player of the Ataris. (I am right-handed, but I play a right-handed guitar left-handed with the strings upside down, like Albert King or Dick Dale.)
Current city I currently split my time between the West Coast and the deserts of Arizona. I’ve been finishing up the Ataris’ new album, and since the studio is in the desert, that feels most like my home currently.
Really want to be in I am very grateful for where I am in life now. 2020 was the most difficult year of my life. I had COVID for six weeks, ended up in the hospital and almost died, then battled long COVID for months afterward. I also went through a difficult breakup completely out of left field. Living through those experiences really put life into perspective and helped me feel even more thankful for each day.
Excited about I am excited about our [newest] single “Car Song” and for this new chapter of life that is unfolding. I feel like I am in a very positive, content, and creative space again. I’m most excited to finally share all of this new music I’ve created with the world.
My current music collection has a lot of I n 2018, I got hit by the driver of a high-speed chase in Los Angeles, which completely totaled our tour van. I always say that the one good thing that came out of that experience was that the new van only had a CD player, which led me down a deep dive of all these amazing old used jazz records. And with that, I fell completely in love with jazz—Coltrane, Miles, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, and Chet Baker being a few of my all-time favorites.
And a little bit of Shoegaze, post-rock, indie, soul, black metal, thrash, old ’60s and ’70s library records, early hip-hop, and Americana.
Preferred format I still use an iPod. It’s the one thing I never leave home without. I don’t have any streaming services, and I still record all the Ataris’ records on two-inch analog tape using old tube amps. There’s something about the real human elements and beautiful mistakes of these old records that, to me, is just irreplaceable.
5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:
1.
Loveless, My Bloody Valentine
I first heard the My Bloody Valentine album Loveless in the winter of 1992. My best friend and I had taken acid on my 14th birthday one year prior. Loveless for me was the sonic equivalent of that moment.
I vividly remember lying in my room, with all the lights out, listening to this massive wall of beautiful noise. It was like a colorful painting or cinematic event—like, for the first time in my life, I was not only hearing the music but feeling it. It still feels just as powerful, current, and impactful today as the moment I first heard it.
2.
S/T, Cigarettes After Sex
This album (and their two most recent albums) are, for me, the perfect rainy day soundtrack.
It will forever remind me of my year spent living in solitude in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and all the beautiful, serene wasteland of desert scenery.
3.
Sticky Fingers, Rolling Stones
The fact that this band recorded Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Let It Bleed, and Beggars Banquet over a consecutive span of FIVE YEARS is still insane to me!
Four perfect records and arguably the best four-album streak in rock and roll history.
The precursor to my love of all things Paul Westerberg and the Replacements.
4.
Ritual de lo Habitual, Jane’s Addiction
“Three Days” is my all-time favorite song, tied with “Five Years” by Bowie. No one has recorded a song like that. It is the “Stairway to Heaven” of my generation. It just takes you on such a ride—so many beautiful and completely epic spaces within the context of one thirteen-minute song.
I also love how this album is very much structured as a Side A and Side B record. Both sides are completely different vibes: Side A being the rock side, and Side B filled with all these lush, beautiful soundscapes.
This album has so much more to offer than the single it got known for.
5.
F♯ A♯ ∞, Godspeed You! Black Emperor
The skyline was beautiful on fire, all twisted metal stretching upwards.
Everything washed in a thin orange haze.
I said: “Kiss me, you’re beautiful. These are truly the last days.”
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it, like a daydream or a fever.
[From “The Dead Flag Blues”]
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