On The List :: Airborne Toxic Event @ Slim's [San Francisco 4.8.09]

Lead-singer Mikel Jollet runs up the stairs, looks me in the face and says, "Want to play something?" I smile, don't have an answer, and honestly couldn't play more than five chords on anything sitting in my field of vision. It was a rhetorical question, one hopes. Airborne Toxic Event head out on stage at Slim's for their encore to play "Does This Mean You're Moving On." The crowd is going San Francisco's version of crazy. The band is gracious. This is their job and they'd be stupid to turn any part of it over to me.

The crowd is affable and knows this by heart. There is even a kid in the front row, decked in a skinny tie and hard-rimmed glasses, who knows all the words to all the songs. It is a mild feat and, if you scan the audience, he is not alone. The band's self-titled record doesn't speak to people because they have a song at radio. It speaks to people because it means something; something enough to be memorized. And those people are here. The crowd isn't the most mercurial but they are polite and they are engaged. They don't need their lives changed tonight. You sense the record has already done its damage.


The set-list is roughly the same one we caught in New York a few weeks back. They open with "Wishing Well," fill the middle with some new material ("Echo Park," which sounded phenomenal) and they close the main set with "Innocence." During the encore, during "Does It Mean You're Moving On..." Jollet and Anna Bulbrook spill into the audience and flail around in the first few rows. It's one of the moments that makes this band so likeable. There isn't an ounce of pretense, even in their dark jackets and dressing room Grey Goose. Jolett tells us it means a lot that we all came out. Airborne Toxic Event are, in the simplest of ways, not about themselves at all. This is nothing less than impressive.

During the last three measures of "Missy," the night's official closer, the crowd gets their moment of transcendence. Bassist Noah Harmon climbs up two amps, freezes near the top of the room and then lets loose down to the stage. It's the final image of the night and it is a good one. It's just before midnight and this band is killing itself to live. They're from the West Coast and the show is sold out. You'd think they wouldn't have a ton to play for. But that's the great reveal. Believe them when they say this means a lot and see what it's like to go to work at 10:10 on a Wednesday night. This is their job - jumping off speakers, pouring into the crowd, and unleashing narrative and melodies that affect. This is work. And it means everything.

32ft Left :: Pomegranates :: "Corriander"

32 Feet is posting from the West Coast for the next week or so. We'll be catching some shows, posting wildly, and drowning in rain. Posts will be shorter, barely topical, and across three time-zones. Stick with us. Pioneers have been trying to live out here for 200 years - we're just the next wave.

Pomegranates are traditionally a lot of work. The pay-off usually doesn't come until the end. Investors and soft-drink makers tried to distill the fruit down to its juice and were rewarded with something that is as healthy and high in antioxidants, as it is bad-tasting and bitter. You can't just strain out the bad parts and keep the good. You have to be thorough, by hand, and do the work.

That being said, we don't know anything about Pomegranates work habits or ethic. It seems like they're meticulous but we've been mislead before. They play a brand of post-shoe-gaze, or put another way, something that is both atmospheric and focused. Something that has moved beyond space-age guitar pedals and loops. Something that is headed somewhere. But the destination, and the effort to get there, is considerable.

From the first measure of "Corriander" they introduce a cascading guitar that seems like it should be the backbone of the whole track. But you can't press out the juice and expect it to taste sweet. You have to do the work, and in this case the work is to wait. And in the last ten measures, we're rewarded for our patience. The riff comes back and is finally the central focus. It's crystalline. It is a wave of sound. It's worth not squeezing.

Listen :: Pomegranates - "Corriander"

32ft Left :: Honey Claws :: "Pemporer"

32 Feet is posting from the West Coast for the next week or so. We'll be catching some shows, posting wildly and drowning in rain. Posts will be shorter, barely topical and across three time-zones. Stick with us. The pioneers have been trying to survive out here for 200 years - we're just the next wave.

If my life was a movie, I'd want Honey Claws' "Pemporer" on the soundtrack. It thumps like a slo-mo 1990s club cut and the backdrop is equal parts spatial and ambient. Except for this little post-colonial-tropic keyboard that sings out and makes you feel like calypso is alive and well. Altogether it feels like the middle of the afternoon and you're walking somewhere important.

Everything is pretty and it's all about you. The Lower East. East LA. Even in rainy San Francisco, you touch down and start to move. Objects fall into rhythm and the world is your music video. People are your extras. The universe revolves around your field of vision. It's like your heartbeat is the only thing powering all the machinery in front of you. All these people are depending on your continued existence for their continued existence. This is the feeling of responsibility for everyone and this is the taste of fear. This is proof that the most self-interested among us should be the most terrified. When the world revolves around you, everything is your fault. Which is why we're shutting down production and making everything about someone else.

Listen :: Honey Claws :: "Pemporer"