I’m the type of person who yearns for new music wherever I can find it, no matter what the type. These initial cravings never seem to be met, which is why, when I do get my hands on a new CD, I spend hours completing either chores or homework with my earbuds in, listening to my most recent fix.
Despite this rather odd habit, I often find myself getting caught up on one specific genre: Indie rock. The whole concept of indie credit — one of the genre’s bases — is something that I always find to be absurd, and something I will never be able to fully wrap my head around.
This is why, when I learned about a new album from The Airborne Toxic Event, a band I had never heard of before, I was a little hesitant to spend my cash on something I thought I would ultimately hate. As it turns out, I was completely incorrect in my assumption.
The Airborne Toxic Event’s second studio album, All At Once, released April 26, has become one of the apexes of my music collection, rising above even some of my favorite CDs in the few short days since I purchased it.
The album begins with “All At Once,” an eerie serenade that documents the conventional cycle of the human life. As other members of the band howl, lead singer Mikel Jollett croons on about birth, death and everything in between. With lyrics like: “We were born without time / Nameless in arms / Of a mother, a father and God,” Jollett sets his listeners up for the emotional and complex journey that is to come with the life of his band’s album.
This slightly depressing, albeit realistic depiction is something to be expected, considering the origins of the band. Formed in Los Angles, CA in 2006, Jollett first began writing music after, in the course of one week, he was dumped by his girlfriend, was diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease and found out his mother had cancer. Before then, Jollett had worked as a freelance writer, and was an avid reader of novels — he even named his band after White Noise, a story about a chemical spill that causes an “airborne toxic event.”
Jollett’s abilities as a writer, as well as his experiences with the burdens he undertook, transfer magnificently to his music. In my favorite song, “Half of Something Else,” Jollett wails along to an explosion of sound from the guitar and drums. As the sounds crash together, Jollett sings about a love he lost, which tore him apart: “It was all that we could do / And all I think about is you / The way that you screamed / The way that you cried / The way that you’d wipe away your eyes and fall against my side.”
Although every song on All At Once is absolutely superb, it would be nothing without its finale: “The Graveyard Near The House.” With “All At Once” heralding the album with the beginning of life, and “The Graveyard Near The House” brings everything to a close with the timeless predicament of death.
With an acoustic guitar and violist Anna Bulbrook to back him up, Jollett calmly warbles the melody of the song: “Bye, bye, bye all this dogged innocence / I can’t pretend that I can tell you what is going to happen next or how to be / But you have no idea about me / Do you?”
Both the beginning and the end of the album hold several similarities and differences, which help weave All At Once into a perfect collection of melodies. While I loved every song that was included in this collection, I think that the intro and outro hold an irreplaceable ambience that could not be matched anywhere else on the album.
It’s safe to say that, by the end of listening to this masterpiece, all my previous assumptions were shattered, and I was left in complete awe of The Airborne Toxic Event’s talent. No longer was I filled with worry that All At Once would be filled with pretentious, egotistical songs, because, after experiencing it as a whole, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is absolutely brilliant.
I would recommend All At Once to anyone with a fondness for music, and, due to the passion and grandeur of its songs, it should stand as the archetypal for all Indie music, if not all music entirely.
The album is available on iTunes, on Amazon.com and at most local music stores.
For more music reviews, read the March 29 article Lavigne presents girly, instrumental comeback
