Stream: The Airborne Toxic Event, ‘Dope Machines’
Kevin Bronson on
5
The Airborne Toxic Event released a new album this week. “Dope Machines” arrived in the mail with a notice touting the L.A. quintet’s reinvention as an electro-pop band and something in the way of an artist’s statement from frontman Mikel Jollett: “We live in a world connected by these dope machines that do all this dope shit. And in some ways they enhance us and others they make us massively lonely and, well, dopey.” As distressing as it is to hear a Stanford-educated former journalist unironically use “dope” as an adjective, this inspired hope. Perhaps this missive heralded the arrival of a concept album?
Disappointingly, no. On their fourth album, the Airborne Toxic Event continues to commodify mawkishness — no worries, there’s still a big market for it — with 10 earworms about hurting or being hurt, leaving or being left, wanting or being wanted.
That post-punk-derived romanticism on their 2008 debut, which spiraled into the overwrought on 2010’s “All At Once” and 2013’s “Such Hot Blood,” has now dissolved into pillow talk. Jollett is “down on his knees” and contrite on “Wrong;” “looking for a sign” on “One Time Thing;” “putting pride on the shelf” on “Time to Be a Man;” in the “arms of a fallen angel” on “Hell and Back;” seeing “life slip by” on the particularly squishy “My Childish Bride;” pleading “don’t ever leave / don’t ever go” on “Something You Lost”; and, finally, back at “midnight … feeling my heart beating” on closer “Chains.”
Technology — which has given such lonelyhearts amazing dating websites and apps, by the way — is addressed with aplomb in the title track, which starts with a riff right out Gary Glitter and segues to the wistful chorus “Eyes on screens / I love these dope machines / Isn’t it funny how much they feel like dreams.” It’s an exemplary verse on an album whose rapid-fire rhymes often land on minefields. As for the new sonic direction, it’s palatable, and current, and probably right in the wheelhouse of Airborne’s core audience. But it’s not hard to wonder how Jollett would answer the question posed at the end of the title track’s chorus: “Am I trying too hard / or am I trying at all?”
||| Download: “Hell and Back”
||| Stream: “Dope Machines” in its entirety
Every popular indie band from the last ten years called. They want their “lalala” chorus singalongs back.
It’d be better if potshots like that weren’t taken from behind the veil of anonymity, but … yeah.
Fair enough. I love you.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. xo
I’m really diggin’ this new album. As a long-time Airborne Toxic Event fan, I like the direction the band’s taken with Dope Machines. I definitely recommend giving it a listen.