Airborne Toxic Event
(Major Domo)
The dramatic sweep of "Wishing Well," the opening track on the Airborne Toxic Event's self-titled debut, announces the five L.A. musicians as epic rockers: They're born to run, in a big country, where the streets have no goddam name. Singer-lyricist Mikel Jollet's gruff baritone and glum lyrics denote a traditionally masculine bard, struggling to express his desire and disappointment to an indifferent world. With the help of an in-house cellist.
Yet that's not the whole story for Jollet -- a writer turned rocker who took his group's name from a Don DeLillo novel -- and his cohorts. On the very next song, "Papillion," Jollet shifts his voice upward and suddenly resembles David Bowie, not for the last time on this album. Add the frisky dance-punk rhythms of such tunes as of "Gasoline" and "This Is Nowhere," and the Event begins to sound like another outbreak of Hollywood glittermania -- even if the band is based in Los Feliz, a few miles east of the Sunset Strip.
The album's most celebrated number, "Sometime Around Midnight," combines U2 guitar with Human League synth, and channels Bono's religiosity into a saga of a failed nightclub pickup: "She's holding her tonic like a cross." Lines like that, plus the cello intro to a song titled nothing less than "Innocence," suggest that "Wishing Well" was a fair forecast of the album's bluster. But then the rhythm section enters again, and gives the song a good kick in the heroic stance.
Standout Tracks: "Gasoline," "This Is Nowhere" MARK JENKINS
