Lame Deer :: "Cheap Hollywood"

Sounding a bit like a shoegaze take on early Airborne Toxic Event recordings, Lame Deer, a band from Guilford in the UK, also root themselves in the imagery of broken American aesthetics. The lyrics, besides the title, address "cheap regrets" and references to lives wasted on the West Coast of these United States. This is certainly not new material, Los Angeles, like New York, is replete with stories of inflated dreams sent to pop behind tended bars and waitress aprons. "Cheap Hollywood" considers this geography in the general first (yes, people, plural do this) and then in the specific (this is, of course, about a girl, singular) and the haunting nature of a relationship gone wrong across 6,000 miles. Think of it as a "Sometime Around Midnight" with more reverb, the same structural disdain for a chorus and a second-act with a wall of sound big enough to dent the dreams of a girl in the American West.

On The List :: Airborne Toxic Event @ The Met, Providence, RI [8.5.11]

(photo via)

All this is not as easy as it looks perhaps. Despite a successful second record, All At Once, charting at 17 on Billboard, with a single, "Changing", in heavy rotation at modern rock radio, Airborne Toxic Event look a little worn. Or maybe, "mechanical" is the right word. For a band that so relied on its mercuriality in 2008, a bizarre combination of surprise success and incredibly magnanimous band members, they seem, for lack of a better word, rehearsed. Singer, Mikel Jollett will later reflect on this grind of being a touring musician, about being far from home and playing too many shows (a worthy footnote: this is one of the most prodigious acts in American rock at something like 200 shows a year) a comment made not to engender any specific sympathy but, rather, to explain why this night ended up turning out so well. He looked exactly at the back of the room and uttered one of those life affirming platitudes that sounds as bullshit as it is completely true, "Nights like this remind you why you do it." This time he's right for all of us.

This is not one of those narratives where we find a band saved by its fans or, as the first paragraph may have mistakenly implied, a band worn down to its dull edge finding some last great moments in front of an admittedly enthusiastic crowd. Airborne Toxic Event will get on their bus and play another show, their music will be licensed in television and movies, they will play late night talk shows, and they will still manage to be the same nice people they were on their first tours at their first shows. In short, they will be fine. But it is a story about degrees. In this case, those small degrees between a live concert being great and being mediocre. Over the long haul, two albums, nearly four years of touring, Europe and back, distinctions like these are achingly slim as the band took the stage, playing "All I Ever Wanted" and loose version of maybe the single biggest rock song of 2011, "Numb".

The set found its legs in the middle, with bassist Noah Harmon upping his intensity level on "Tokyo Radio", a bonus track from All At Once that sounds better live than it does as a fuzzy addendum to the deluxe version of the record. The main set closed with "Something New", the stomping latest single, "Changing" and the band's seminal thesis song, "Sometime Around Midnight". The audience matched this succession of upbeat cuts, on board and singing nearly every lyric, including a guttural screaming of, "I am a gentleman" during the pre-chorus of "Changing". Jollett moved to the edge of the crowd, all of us yelling now, a portent of the singer himself spilling into the audience during the encore.

After a quick trip back stage, the band returned, mostly wearing the t-shirts of opening band The Drowning Men. TATE played classic closing song, "Missy" only stuffing an medley of classic songs in the middle, featuring "I'm On Fire", "I Fought The Law", a song Jollett dedicated to, "that fucking racist cop", and a faithful cover of Johnny Cash's, "Folsom Prison Blues". The closing song would be the eponymous first track off their second album, "All At Once", one of those songs about getting older, becoming something else, and living under the specter of evaporating time. But, Jollett reflects first, telling us it is nights like this that make it worth it. This is not about saving a band, for they don't need to be saved, but it is about remembering why this is so cool, when it has been so cool for so long and started to feel like something else, something granted, given, an "of course", repeated stimulus dangerously recast as a numbing agent.

But despite the band's lyrics at the beginning of the night, the ones about wanting to be numb, all of us will leave in a different capacity. In a wasted, somewhat forgotten section just north of a medium-sized New England city, a crowd packed an old factory for a rock concert and a band found new energy in their fans. I suspect they do this most nights, or maybe only on the good ones, transcending a practiced series of moves, the sublimation of songs they've played maybe a thousand times, and finding something new and important in something old and tiring. Or maybe Jollett says this in every city and every crowd finds it a unique commentary on their supposed uniqueness. But having seen this band enough now, it seemed that something a little special happened with the crowd at The Met. It was only a few degrees above everything else, just a shade, but these are the few degrees that matter.

Interview :: Mikel Jollett of Airborne Toxic Event [5.3.11]

Mikel Jollett, writer and singer behind Airborne Toxic Event, charged into the crowd no less than three times last night at Piano's, possessed with all of the energy of the same guy, though then considerably less traveled and famous, who took the stage in the same place three years ago. As part of the band's "origins" shows, they've returned to all the small clubs they played when they were first touring as a band, you know, before KROQ added "Sometime Around Midnight" and before everyone had the same thought all at once: Is it possible he wrote this song for and about me? Earlier yesterday, Jollett reflected to us about life in his band, making his new and outstanding record, All At Once and what it means to make music. Our questions and his answers after the jump.

Airborne Toxic Event :: "Neda"

Airborne Toxic Event are back with their first new material in two years. The song, a dedication to the Iranian woman shot by the repressive regime operating in Tehran, is sonically a mash-up of "Innocence" and "Wishing Well;" though here there is a palatable hollowness, perhaps intentional, suggested by gaps between lyrical couplets. Thematically, they call it a "prayer for the dissidents" or a hope that the least powerful among us have the symbolic power to tilt the universe.

On The List :: Airborne Toxic Event @ Webster Hall [10.16.09]

Airborne Toxic Event's frontman, Mikel Jollet is shaking a bottle of Jameson into the crowd like he just won an American professional sports title. Irish whiskey, not at all known for its carbonation, is somewhat dutifully spraying into the audience. The crowd goes wild. Rock concerts have gone stale and this sort of thing rarely or organically happens. Jollet whirls back around to his left and flushes the final slugs from the bottle. He pauses, looks a little dazed and moves on. But this is the thing about excess; your friends are on stage, the venue is packed and people know the words to your songs. You're facing down fame and it's a little overwhelming but you keep going.

Newly signed to Island/Def Jam in the spring, Airborne Toxic Event are officially not sitting at the kid's table anymore. When we first saw the band two Junes ago at Pianos, they were good-naturedly complaining about having to use a printed-out set-list. It was their tour manager they said, not them, who insisted on making their eight songs official. As the band takes the stage at Webster Hall, two screens project loops of found footage. The lights go down and the band comes out one-by-one with Jollet arriving last. Entrance music surges in the background. This isn't a band taking the stage, it is a festival of return; a parade for the band that used to think parades were funny.

Like any band with one record, the front-half of the set is loaded with the deeper cuts. We get the New York-referencing "Does This Mean You're Moving On," the up-tempo "Gasoline" and staple-cover "Goodbye Horses." Portions of the crowd are distracted and you can see Jollet's frustration as a packed Webster Hall chats in between songs and even during a particularly delicate moment between violinist Anna Bulbrook and himself on stage. He glares to his left at a particularly in-attentive section of the audience. This is the problem with popularity: More people know your band but they might not be the people who you originally enjoyed playing concerts for. 16-months ago there wasn't a breath of talk between songs but that was 80 people and this is 2,500. Music industry rule #43: Once your song impacts at radio, you can't exactly control what happens next.

The night is not all the fight between a band and two-halves of their growing fan base. They play an intimate version of "Wishing Well" with upright-piano, cello, and sparse drums. What will become second-album stand-outs, "Right Now" and another song yet-untitled, draw the audience into a movement they don't fully understand yet. They will really like these songs in a years time when the second-album comes out. Of course, "Sometime Around Midnight" is predictably excellent and "Innocence" is the best live song they play. People are moved and that counts for something.

The encore is an explosive and disjointed affair. Featuring, "All The People Who Died," a Jim Carroll Band cover that Jollet dedicates to the now-dead Jim Carroll. Henry Clay People and Red Cortez take the stage and everyone is a mess of tackling, dancing, and alcohol. These people are young and this fun is real. Someone passes Jollet a bottle of Jameson and he sprays it at the audience. How else do you translate what you're doing on stage to a crowd this size? You do your best to share what you're going through, even if you're not the least bit sure the masses will get the right message. After all, if you've become a part of them - they've become a part of you.

New Roman Times :: "Smoke In Your Disguise"

I am cleaning out my life today because I am moving apartments. Without being overly sentimental, when cleaning out a bedroom you run into artifacts that jog your memory. In this case, it was a schedule. Written in my best hand-writing on a piece of Virgin Records stationary, this was my road-map to CMJ 2007. Sitting in the 9pm slot at the Mercury Lounge on one night in October was Airborne Toxic Event. Funny thing is, I went to see the other show on my schedule: Cut Off Your Hands, Foreign Born, and Oh No! Oh My! But I had Airborne Toxic on the schedule. And that means something.

So across my inbox comes New Roman Times and their suggestion that they might remind me of Airborne Toxic Event. First it's definitely weird that ATE has gone from CMJ after-thought in 2007 to playing for 50 people at Piano's last June to being in publicists' emails as an instantly recognizable, popular artist. For the record, Airborne Toxic Event will be playing Webster Hall next time they come through New York. I'd love to say I didn't call this.

But back to New Roman Times, they do remind me of Airborne Toxic Event or perhaps of a more bombastic Moonbabies. The churning arena-guitars and the crushing lyrics, forget the dance-ready, urgent drums - it all adds up to something big and moving. In the second verse, the guitars pump and the lead-singer crushes "I'll be there right from the start/I'll be there when you fall apart/I'll be the smoke in your disguise." It's about getting away, I think; a dynamic rescue from some unknown threat. It's worth noting the chorus is, "you're breaking my heart/you're breaking my heart/but before we begin/we better learn how to start." This is built for radio and not in an uncredible way either. Airborne Toxic Event isn't a bad comparison. So when you have a chance to see New Roman Times, don't miss it.

Listen :: New Roman Times - "Smoke In Your Disguise"

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

This is an update and addition to the Airborne Toxic Event review we posted from last week. First of all, great show and I only half did the experience justice. They are an incredibly gracious and warm group of folks. Not a bad word to say about them. We did get our hands on some great live shots from a friend of the band we met quickly backstage. He was down with sharing them and you can look through the whole stream over at flickr.

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.

On The List :: Airborne Toxic Event @ The Bowery Ballroom [3.11.09]

There are singular moments in rock music and then there are Singular Moments In Rock Music. Last night, we're filing under capital "T" Truth. Airborne Toxic Event are on the stage at the Bowery, a string quartet to their right, and their drummer vaulted halfway up to the ceiling. It's an impressive spectacle. If you just squint your eyes a little, you'd see the death-hum of four stringed bows moving and churning in perfect sequence. If you listen hard, you hear a band in rare form - lean and sharp from eight consecutive months of touring. If you listen to what you're feeling, it's ebullient. They're playing "Sometime Around Midnight" and it seems like this band is exploding from every angle like a volcanic Pacific island. This is A Singular Moment In Rock Music.

But the trick is on us. "Sometime Around Midnight," is the song most of the crowd came to see (radio is a bear like that) but it's not the most moving moment of the night. Up next, and last for the set, is "Innocence." The string quartet, vicious and moving on "Midnight" have moved up a level into "potentially lethal" and "emotionally propulsive." The comparison to Arcade Fire doesn't make sense on a genre-level, but as far as strings and the last time they moved anyone like this, well, it's approximate. "Innocence" sounds so big it could rip the pavement off Delancey Street. I've used this expression before and I had no idea how little I meant it then compared to now.

If you rewind a little, the band gave us some songs from the next record. They played a set front-loaded with old material, "Wishing Well" and "Gasoline," packed the middle of the set with new songs, and closed with the old favorites. It's not rocket science but it is rock and roll. The new material made people predictably uncomfortable. For the suit, tie, collar, talk-through-songs set, this was a challenge. For everyone else, it was a window into the future. New songs like "Echo Park" and two of the three others make you think that the second record could be better than the first. And once clear of the new material, the band ripped through "This Is Nowhere," flying into the final act.

I could wax philosophical about "Sometime Around Midnight" and "Innocence" but, put simply, this was the best moment of the night. The crowd was genuinely moved because it was genuinely moving. The band came back for a two-song encore, closed with "Missy" as usual and threw tambourines into the crowd. Then they stepped to the edge of the stage and slapped hands. It was the picture of gravitas. Wait. It was a Singular Moment.

Airborne Toxic Event :: LP (S/T)

Today is August 5 and The Airborne Toxic Event album is descending on music retailers like an infectious cloud. I know the kids aren't really into buying records these days. I know most bands only have two good songs. And I know that we're all too cynical for our own good. Which is why it's so important that you find a way to listen to this album.

From album opener "Wishing Well," to the massive closer "Innocence" the band's first self-titled LP is diverse, more than a little epic and as approachable a rock album as you've heard in a while. "Sometime Around Midnight" is the clear stand-out, with a second-half that causes some people to wonder if this band couldn't end up playing stadiums when all is said and done. And there are smaller songs like "Does This Mean You're Moving On?," a heart-breaking ode to jealousy in New York City. This is a band that traffics in post-punk, synth-rock, 1950s throw-back and it's all packaged with literate lyrics from a lead-singer who used to write novels. 

I'll leave you with an acoustic version of the band's single, "Sometime Around Midnight" and while you're listening, go find the record and buy it. I promise it'll be in your end-of-the-year Top 10. It might be in my Top 2. 

"Sometime Around Midnight" (Acoustic)

On The List :: Airborne Toxic Event @ The Mercury Lounge [7.31.08]

"You just have to see her. You just have to see her. You know that she'll break you in two." Airborne Toxic Event (ATE) lead singer is intoning these lyrics as the band tears through radio-ready single, "Sometime Around Midnight." The image of a beautiful breakdown isn't anything new. In fact, lyrically, it dates back to Frou Frou's "Let Go" and the tectonic Garden State Soundtrack. It's the idea that there's clarity in pain. The idea that even our most bleak personal struggles have value. It's a theme ATE isn't afraid to take on. They wrote a whole record about it.

The band is enjoying their first New York sellout; crowd that is, not a seeming loss of credibility.  Lead singer, Mikel Jollet pushes the bassist while their cute hipster multi-instrumentalist, Anna Bulbrook bounces around the stage like a sprite who had Leslie Feist as a high school guidance counselor. By the end of the night, she'll end up in the crowd with a tamborine twirling around and turning the end of "Missy" into a complete blow out. The crowd is on board even through a relatively tame first half of the set list.

Jollet makes joking comparison between Silverlake in LA and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Their parallels are obvious and Jollet wants us to know that any competition between the two is uncalled for. "I heard Silverlake and Brooklyn were in a fight ... but that ends right here." The band then tears through, "This Is Nowhere," their best live track and a song that completely sums up the experience of bands "mortgaging their futures." Jollet made the same comment at Pianos a month ago. I could hear him say it again and it's not repetitive if it's still true.

The band closes with "Innocence." It opens in near silence as Jollet approaches the microphone and is barely audible. Someone in the crowd is on a cell phone and you can tell. The crowd lets out a "shhhhhh" and you can be sure that's the first time a Mercury Lounge crowd has shushed someone. But that's the level of engagement here. We're waiting for the band to level us with their finishing kick and no one is going to ruin it with a "dude, alright, cool, we'll talk later." "Innocence" predictably and satisfyingly explodes and the crowd claps along. When Airborne Toxic Event tries to leave the stage, there is simply no way that is happening.

They come back with "Missy" and everyone goes nuts. It's not their best song but it is their last. And if there's beauty in struggling to make it as a band, and beauty in getting your heart broken, then there's beauty in departure. By tomorrow the band will be closing Conan O'Brien and from there they'll continue out on tour and by the time they're back in New York, it'll be the Roseland Ballroom. You're watching something blow up in real time. This band is going to be big. And you can't help but root for them. 

"Come meet us. We promise we won't be assholes. The point here is for us to meet you," says Jollet. It's a populist notion and they mean it. They shake hands with strangers the whole way out. More than a month ago, I said this was the best American rock band on tour right now. I still mean it. 

The Airborne Toxic Event :: In the back of a van

We've got exciting news from The Airborne Toxic Event. Not only does their first LP come out on August 5, they're also recording 10 acoustic versions of songs off the album in the 10 weeks leading up to the release. We're up to week five and arguably the strongest acoustic translation(as well as one of their best recorded tracks), "Does This Mean You're Moving On?" They recorded this version the back of a van speeding down Sunset Blvd. Lead-singer, Mikel Jollett introduced the song when they blew the doors off Pianos back in June with, "This next one is a dance song. But if you listen to the lyrics, it's really quite sad." True words from the man in the middle.


"Does This Mean You're Moving On" (Acoustic)

On The List: Airborne Toxic Event @ Pianos [6.12.08]

Within about three seconds you can tell if a band is ready to blow your doors off or if they're just going to hang around and play some tunes. Airborne Toxic Event opened with "Papillon," maybe one of their less good songs, and it was still obvious they were ready to explode Pianos. Did they sound a little like The Hives? Sure. If The Hives were playing 1950s rock songs and had a working knowledge of the British post-punk scene of the 1980s. It's a profoundly post-modern pastiche of influence and it is fucking awesome.

Airborne Toxic Event play an eight-song set list which the drummer privately confides before the show, "we haven't used a set list in three years but we've got this really nice tour manager ..." before trailing off. The tour manager does look really nice and brings the band water. These are the marks of a band just trying out being bigger and bigger; you've got a publicist and you've got a tour manager and you're 3,000 miles from home with a room full of relative strangers. This can be difficult.

Most of the songs deal with disillusionment and heartbreak. The seminal and explosive "This Is Nowhere" is about the troubled and mercurial Silverlake scene in East Los Angeles. The lead-singer jokes, "you have one of those here too, right? One of those music scenes with a bunch of people completely mortgaging their futures - yeah, I heard that." He tells us that the band is "their life" and you have to believe him.

The band closes with "Innocence," after a fairly pumped up version of "Wishing Well." The song ends with a propulsive, thrashing conclusion. Even though it's not even 9pm and even though Pianos runs very much on time, the crowd stops the band from packing up with sustained applause. The sound tech is moved enough to let the band play one more song. This is relevant because New York crowds rarely work for anything and sound guys rarely give a shit. Perhaps, we just need a band with enough energy and earnesty to cut through the cynicism. Or maybe they were just that good. The band will open for The Fratellis the following evening and things will move on and become bigger and bigger. If there's one rock band to see on tour this summer, it's The Airborne Toxic Event. It means a lot to them and last night, it meant a lot to us.

[Photo credit: EGrossman 2008]