Spin – Breaking Out
Breaking Out – The Airborne Toxic Event
West Coast upstarts rewrite indie rock with passionate flair
By Mikael Wood
September 2008
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 quintet—including bassist Noah Harmon, drummer Daren Taylor, and Anna Bulbrook on violin and keyboard—combine Joshua Tree guitar theatrics with danceable new-wave grooves while Jollett mirrors the music’s dark chamber-punk drone witih earnest tales of downtrodden folk seeking contact in a disconnected age. Catch Airborne live and you’ll likely see a mix of stomping, hollering and/or crying—both onstage and off.
Jollett, 34, formed the band after a series of medical revelations sidetracked him from writing a novel: First his mom was diagnosed with cancer, then he learned he had two autoimmune disorders (alopecia areata and vitiligo). The group spent 2007 recording songs, and Jollett blanketed blogs with MP3s. Earlier this year, while the band was doing a five-week residency at tastemaking club Spaceland, L.A.’s influential modern-rock station KROQ added their “Sometime Around Midnight” to its regular rotation.
“Of the thousands of submissions we get from local bands, it’s rare I’ll bring one into our weekly music meeting,” says KROQ music director Lisa Worden. “With Airborne, I thought the song could hold its own against everything we play.”
An old-fashioned bidding war ensued—Jollett claims one major spent $7,000 on food and drink wooing the group—before they signed with Majordomo, a new L.A. label that released the latest from veteran indie rockers Earlimart. Now Airborne will spend the fall on tour. For Jollett, it’s about time. “When I was writing this stuff, I’d be like, ‘Why am I not playing a show right now?’” he says. “Even if it’s only for my neighbor’s cats.”
FAST FACTS:
In addition to writing fiction—his short story “The Crack” is in the June issue of McSweeney’s—Jollett has been a music critic for NPR and the Los Angeles Times.
The band’s name comes from Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise, a reference lost on most. “People think we’re an Orange County punk band,” Jollett says.