All At Once

Serious Californian guys

With their 2009 eponymous debut album, The Airborne Toxic Event immediately took up the implementation of their grand plan on musical captivation of the whole world. Targeted at the wide audience, fastened tightly to powerful lyrical and variegated music material, thus record proved that, apart from big ambitions, these young men from California possess big creative potentials. To record their second long player, the American ensemble took a number of serious steps. First, they moved from a minor independent label called Majordomo Records to a far more prominent company, Island Records. Secondly, they entrusted the producing of the record into the hands of Dave Sardy, a specialist who had already worked by then with Oasis, and Band Of Horses. Thirdly, and this comes as the most important part of their preparation routine, The Airborne Toxic Event modified slightly their music style. The outcome of all these action is the All At Once album, released in spring 2011.

With rich music material they sound like the best of the best

The title track opening the album, All At Once, is a high-resolution image of its performer’s intensions. The Airborne Toxic Event are going to play a flawless music with all instruments doing their best, all melodies keeping you burn and all vocals reaching the bottom of your heart. Sweeping rhythm-section sounds as if calling the audience to join a parade, while the singer provides them with moral and behavior instructions. You should not be so surprised at the power of his words. Mikel Jollett is an experienced journalist and novelist who knows where to dig the right wording and how to convey his thoughts to make them linger in the listener’s mind on and on. On the other pole of the album is a song so much different from the opener. The Graveyard Near The House is the saddest song of all, the grand finale to the whole act. The striking difference between these two tracks is the illustration of the many-faceted nature of the whole All At Once work. Between the first and the last tracks you can find nine more, each good in its own way, each so unique and gripping. There are times when the band begins to bring in some associations with other performers. But this occurs only because their own songs are so good that you can only think of the best of the best. Like of Bruce Springsteen, whose folk motives and soul-searching approach find their way into The Kids Are Ready To Die. Or of The Cure, whose darkened romantics are alive once again in Strange Girl.

All At Once is a big work done perfectly

No doubt, the key figure in The Airborne Toxic Event is Jollett, who, if you compare All At Once to the band’s first album, sings more confidently and writes even more intriguingly. This time, he studies a wide range of questions. And this time, he knows for sure that the core of his style is story-based texts with tales where characters have so much in common with listeners, and this makes the listening even more fascinating. The musicians performed their parts brilliantly just as well, except you do not notice it as easily and quickly as you notice the vocals. Accurate and rapid riffs, like cavalry attacks, emerge out of nowhere and into nowhere they vanish, keeping the tension at the needed level. Synthesizers mould the atmosphere dictated by the ideas of the songs, and thus every track has its own mood. Finally, drums team up with bass tightly to be able to keep one listener alarmed and the whole crown in flames. All At Once is, probably, exactly what the musicians wanted it to be, a lively, emotional and unpredictable piece of great music work. The rest of the story is going to be even more interesting.