Im Frannz Club begeisterte die kalifornische Band mit punkigem Rock’n’ Roll und presste den letzten Tropfen Schweiß aus den Zuhörern
By Patricia WolfAugust 26, 2009
Sie kommen aus Los Feliz – einem Stadtteil von LA. Los Feliz ist spanisch und heißt „die Glücklichen“. Und sie machen definitiv glücklich. Die rund 300 Leute, die sich an diesem schwül-heißen Sommerabend im Frannz Club eingefunden haben, um The Airborne Toxic Event zu hören, sind schon hin und weg, als das Quintett die Bühne betritt. Bei gefühlten 45 Grad im Club zerschmilzt ganz schnell jegliche Ehrfurcht vor der vermeintlichen Intellektualität der Band, die ihren Namen einem Roman des amerikanischen Schriftstellers Don DeLillo entlehnt hat.
Zu unterschiedlich sind die fünf Typen, als dass sich die Band auf einen Begriff reduzieren ließe. Sie haben von allem etwas – schon rein äußerlich. Sänger Mikel Jollet gibt in Anzug, Krawatte und mit großer Brille den Elvis Costello, während Drummer Daren Taylor mit seinem Schnäuzer an Freddie Mercury erinnert und zuletzt mit freiem Oberkörper auf sein Instrument eindrischt, dass man Angst hat, es könnte entzwei brechen. Bassist Noah Harmon geht als klassischer Westcoast-Surfer-Boy durch, derweil Keyborderin und Violinistin Anna Bulbrook im schwarzen Paillettenkleid über die Bühne und Boxen oder sich unter das Publikum mischt. Allenfalls der schlaksige Gitarrist Steven Chen hält sich eher im Hintergrund.
TATE beginnen roh und laut – mit Stücken, die sich vielleicht als Punkrock’roll bezeichnen lassen – wenn es denn eine Einordnung braucht – der sich die Band freilich in Interviews konsequent und resolut entzieht. Wer unbedingt nach Einflüssen sucht,...
Nennt es Pubrock, nennt es Postpunk: Die kalifornische Band The Airborne Toxic Event macht Poesie, zu der man tanzen kann, traditionsgesättigt und mit Riffs an der richtigen Stelle.
By Edo ReentsJuly 10, 2009
Photo Credit: Autumn de Wilde
Wenn man diese Platte flüchtig anspielt, dann möchte man abwinken: schon wieder eine dieser Postpunk-Bands, deren Mitglieder mehr Zeit vor dem Spiegel verbringen als mit dem Stimmen ihrer Instrumente. Selbst wenn sie es täten – die Instrumente funktionieren, und am Äußeren ist, wie oben zu sehen, auch nichts auszusetzen. Das unbetitelte Debüt gehört zu den schmissigsten, bündigsten Rockplatten der vergangenen Jahre, voller guter Einfälle, reizvoller Akkordwechsel und gefälliger Melodien, wie sie auf die LP-Distanz nur ganz wenige Band hinbekommen.
Die Strokes und die Kooks, die Fratellis und die Thermals, Razorlight und wie die Mucker alle heißen, müssen sich jedenfalls warm anziehen. Und wenn man dann noch hört, dass der Sänger, Rhythmusgitarrist und Hauptsongschreiber Mikel Jollett eigentlich Tischler von Beruf ist – „I used to be a carpenter“, sagt er, das klingt so schön nach Tim Hardin! – und nach getaner Arbeit, mit schmerzendem Rücken im wesentlichen nur noch Bier trinken will. Damit haben sie schon gewonnen.
Tanzbare Poesie
stays grounded
Checking off the to-do list: The Airborne Toxic Event has gotten a lot accomplished in the past year. The L.A.-based indie rock quintet’s self-titled album, released in August, has passed 100,000 in sales. Hit single Sometime Around Midnight peaked at No. 4 on USA TODAY’s modern rock airplay chart and is at No. 30 on the hot AC. In March, the band signed with major label Island Def Jam. And on a radio show that month, U2′s Adam Clayton name-checked Sometime Around Midnight as a favorite song of his. “Check that off our list of things to do,” says lead singer/frontman Mikel Jollett, 35. “Now I just have to write a novel and father a child.”
Paying dues: “Journalists have asked us how we feel about our ‘meteoric rise,’ ” says bassist Noah Harmon, 27. “There’s been nothing meteoric about it. We’ve played...
Momentum, World Tour
By Jason LipshutzJune 27, 2009
Photo Credit: Autumn de Wilde
The trouble with fronting a constantly touring rock outfit is that it leaves little time to finish a novel. That’s what Mikel Jollett singer/guitarist of the Airborne Toxic Event, came to realize as the momentum behind his band’s self-titled debut album stalled his prose output.
“I want to finish it, but I keep going on tour,” he says. “I like writing at home late at night, when I’ve just finished reading a good book. It’s hard to write on a bus: it’s a whole other lifestyle.”
Jollett probably won’t finish his novel anytime soon. The Los ANgeles group has announced an 11-country...
LA band battle on after singer loses his voice
By Avril CaddenJune 7, 2009
Photo Credit: Kristy Sparow
When Airborne Toxic Event frontman Mikel Jollett’s voice was ravaged by disease, he would have been forgiven for quitting music.
Instead he and his band simply reworked their songs to suit—and they’ve never looked back.
Mikel said: “Autoimmune disease attacked the nerve that controls my vocal cords, so one is partially paralysed.
“It takes about six months to a year for that to heal so that we had to lower all the keys and redo everything.
“I’d usually just scream through the set but I have to lower everything and sing.
“It’s really just a way of getting sympathy. I figure if I tell everyone they’ll let me get...
February 2009
Ask most musicians what aspirations they have for their band and they’ll share grand desires for Almost Famous-esque success and seminal accomplishments. But not for The Airborne Toxic Event’s Mikel Jollett, as he solemnly reveals his wishes to The Fly: “I hope nobody gets sick. I hope nobody catches a horrid disease. I hope nobody gets in a car wreck. If somebody goes to a bar, I hope they get back home safe. I only worry about keeping everyone together.” His fretfulness isn’t surprising when you hear the emotional carnage the frontman has battled, though, and, after a few minutes on the phone to Jollett, The Fly realises his ominous approach to life was instrumental in the formation of the band. “I’d taken a year off to write a book [about, umm, 4 friends who must confront their terminal illnesses] and then my mum got cancer,” Mikel explains in his reposeful lilt. “I’d been dating this girl for a long time and we broke up. Then I went and saw a doctor and he told me I had Vitiligo...
Self-publishing, self-financing indie outfit TATE bring their literary-minded indie-punk-folk-klezmer-whatever to the 100 Club on Monday.
By Eddy LawrenceJanuary 29 – February 4, 2009
They’re actually already… well up.
We have to admit, it’s a bit rich giving them an On The Up, given that their EP came out more than a year ago and they’ve already played two tours of the UK. But now is when it’s already played two tours of the UK. But now is when it’s already starting to happen for TATE. Radio has picked up on ‘Sometime Around Midnight’, the lead single from their forthcoming debut LP, with a vengeance. Not bad for a band who are still, technically speaking, unsigned.
‘In the States now, we’re at No 8,’ boggles frontperson Mikel Jollett. ‘We’re the only indie rock band in the chart. We don’t understand it, because it’s a song that has no chorus, that’s just a story about a bad night. It’s very sad, and there’s no little thing you can bop your head to. There’s like...
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Bitter exes, desperate housewives and dead dog’s ashes won’t stop LA troubadours The Airborne Toxic Event spreading their love. Martin Robinson joins their crazy Californian road trip.
By Martin RobinsonJanuary 24, 2009
Photo Credit: Andy Willsher
Bill Hicks called it “turd city”, Woody Allen said its only cultural advantage is “being able to turn right at a red light”, and Larry David fans will know Los Angeles as plastic and preening to the point of insanity. Imagine our surprise, then, to find in the suburb of Silver Lake, a warm-blooded indie scene bubbling dirtily underneath the shiny Hollywood machine. The Spaceland club is the meeting point for the city’s struggling artists, writers and especially musicians; its tin foil-clad stage has raised the likes of Cold War Kids and Silversun Pickups, but tonight NME...
Death, sex and getting dumped shape anthemic US indie rockers.
By Mic WrightMarch 2009
Photo Credit: Nick Wilson
WHO? Epic indie rockers founded by former journalist and up-and-coming novelist Mikel Jollett after the worst week of his life. During seven days in March 2006, Jollett’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, he learnt he was suffering from a potentially life-threatening autoimmune disease, and his long-term girlfriend left him. He says, “I just didn’t care anymore. I thought, maybe I’ll pay my rent, maybe I won’t, but what I am going to do is start a fucking rock band.”
DOOM BUT NO GLOOM: Jollett’s tales of death, depression and being dumped might suggest melancholy music, but the band write...
After a ‘week from hell’ in which his life fell apart, music was the best medicine for Mikel Jollett. He tells Dave Simpson about the Airborne Toxic Event’s euphoric sound of recovery
By Dave SimpsonJanuary 23, 2009
Photo Credit: Martin Godwin
Mikel Jollett suffers from autoimmune disorder, a genetic condition that can affect sufferers in all sorts of strange ways. They can be struck down with terrible illnesses, or lose all their body hair. However, the condition is easily manageable with a healthy lifestyle. Doctors recommend plenty of sleep, fruit and vegetables and...
Fave
By Larry GetlenIndie band the Airborne Toxic Event shocked the music industry when major LA radio stations began playing the song “Sometime Around Midnight,” which the band had hastily recorded and distributed via MP3. Now the song, which describes the heartbreak of running into an ex, has been named the top Alternative Song of 2008 by iTunes. We spoke to singer Mikel Jollett.
The iTunes thing is nice, but . . . “Music is three or four minutes of art where you tell a story and have a melody. The idea of ranking it the way you would the NBA is a little silly. But it was really flattering.”
Events depicted in “Sometime Around Midnight” are true. “That whole thing happened. That was a few months after we had broken up. I got up the next morning, shook off the hangover, and started writing. I didn’t leave the house for three days. I just walked around in my boxers with the acoustic guitar,...
The Airborne Toxic Event rose to notoriety in near-record time: Hometown station KROQ began spinning the L.A. band’s first single, “Sometime Around Midnight,” in January, three weeks after the unsigned quintet finished recording it at a friend’s house.
But frontman Mikel Jollett, 34, and guitarist Steven Chen, 30, of the band— which plays the Blank Club on Wednesday — put in years of struggle first. In the literary world, not the musical one.
After Chen graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000, a mutual friend suggested he speak to Jollett, a 1996 Stanford alum, for advice on making it as a writer in San Francisco. At the time, Jollett didn’t even know Chen played guitar, and Jollett “had no ambition to be a musician, none whatsoever.
“I wanted to be a writer. And then this whole music thing just happened. It’s a little absurd.”
In 2006, after years of scuffling, Jollett finally was getting...
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When death haunts you, your music really starts to matter
By Mark BeaumontSeptember 13, 2008
Photo Credit: Pamela Littky
“My whole life I was invincible like everyone else,” says Mikel Jollett, singer with L.A.’s The Airborne Toxic Event, fingering the patches of his scalp. “You’re the talented one, the smart one, the cute one, and then suddenly it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re gonna lose all your hair and your face is gonna turn white and you’ll die. Oh and so’s your mom.’”
At the start of 2006 Mikel was diagnosed with a genetic over-active immune system which could cut 20 years from his life. The next day his mum rang to tell him she had cancer. The day after that he split up with his long-term girlfriend. The day after that he quit his job to dedicate his life to writing...
West Coast upstarts rewrite indie rock with passionate flair
By Mikael Wood
September 2008
Photo Credit: Clark Hsiao and Jessica Haye
According to Airborne Toxic Event frontman Mikel Jollett, Pavement ruined indie rock. “Don’t get me wrong,” he cautions, munching a salad with guitarist Steven Chen at an eatery up the street from Jollett’s apartment in Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood. “Pavement are one of my favorite bands of all time. But there’s a difference between looking like you’re not trying hard as an artistic decision in response to pop music and actually not trying hard.
The Airborne Toxic Event try really, really hard: On their self-titled debut, the...
Leader Mikel Jollett turns dark life experiences into unexpectedly uplifting songs. A wider audience is discovering this L.A. band.
By Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times Staff WriterAugust 9, 2008
Photo Credit: Stefano Paltera / For The Times
MIKEL JOLLETT, lead singer of the fast-breaking local band the Airborne Toxic Event, is aware of his reputation for darkness. He’s earned it through songs such as “Happiness Is Overrated,” a harder-rocking take on the Smiths, or the gloomy breakup song “Sometime Around Midnight.”
Even the band’s jauntiest number, the Franz Ferdinand-flavored “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?,”...
Occasionally you get lucky and stumble across a band at the very moment they ignite the engines and blast off into the heavens.
Such a band right now is Los Feliz’s The Airborne Toxic Event, a wired and ballistic cross between The Arcade Fire, Coldplay, The Walkmen and a black-hearted Clash. A lanky Russell Brand-a-like plays bass (sometimes with a violin bow), a girl in a dress like a straight jacket throws padded-room shapes at the violin, tambourine and keyboard and the music just gets louder and richer until it makes Paris Hilton look like a mute wallflower and practically...
Go here for the interview and in-studio performance
Given that its name comes from Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise, it’s no surprise that The Airborne Toxic Event infuses its catchy rock with literary references. But its songs have heart, too: Singer Mikel Jollett (a former music reviewer for NPR) launched the band in 2006 as a way of dealing with personal hardship, so it’s no surprise that his songs connect on a visceral level.
The Airborne Toxic Event’s self-titled full-length debut has earned the band comparisons to Modest Mouse, Arcade Fire and Interpol, among others. Complementing Jollett’s dry vocals with surf-friendly rock, the group has made more than a few “Bands to Watch” lists, both before and since the release of its debut.
VANCOUVER — Let me tell you about this song. It starts softly, the sweet sound of violin and viola, then it swirls and swells. The words are all true, an unflinching rendering of emotional pain.
It plays out at a bar in Los Angeles, some time around midnight. There is a woman you are definitely not over. She comes to say hello. The scent of her perfume sends your head spinning.
“All of these memories come rushing like feral waves to your mind: of the curl of your bodies like two perfect circles entwined. And you feel hopeless and homeless and lost in the haze...
Go here for the article and 10-part video blog
Pemberton
In the space of one week in 2006, Mikel Jollett was diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease, his mother was diagnosed with cancer, he and his longtime girlfriend split, and he quit a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit cold turkey.
After a month of moping around his apartment, Jollett, who until then had been working on a novel, decided to pursue his career as a musician. So he pulled himself together and set out to create the Airborne Toxic Event.
“I was in a haze, feeling knocked down, and one day, I decided to start playing my guitar,” Jollett says. “And I realized that music is all I want to do.” Over the course of several months, Jollett, 35, recruited the group’s other four members through friends of friends, meeting keyboardist Anna Bulbrook at a taco stand after a night of bar-hopping.
