the Gently Mad

Once again, I didn’t get around to this until Tuesday. Oh well.

Earlier this year I discovered a band called The Airborne Toxic Event. They didn’t yet have an album, but after hearing Sometime Around Midnight I immediately downloaded their EP Does This Mean You’re Moving On?, searched everything I could find about them on YouTube and started frequenting their Myspace for new songs.

I can’t overstate how great I think this band is. I can count on one hand (Ok, maybe two) the number of times I have discovered an artist or band about which I wouldn’t change a thing.

Sometime Around Midnight really is a perfect song. It’s about a guy descending into a drunken despair as he watches the woman he loves leave a club with another man. Even if you have never experienced this, the song hits on so many feelings and emotions that you can’t help but see yourself in the lyrics.

Musically, the song is also perfect. Staring softly and gradually building to a string-swept wall of crunching sound, Midnight leaves you feeling completely satisfied.

Finding such a great song is even rarer than finding great bands, for me at least. I remember a similar feeling when I first heard the Goo Goo Doll’s Black Balloon more than a decade ago.

But Midnight is a perfect example of what this band does best — somehow taking the little, day-to-day circles of modern life and romance and turning them into art.

The other thing I love about this band is their incredible literariness. The fact that their name comes from a Don DeLillo novel is telling, in my opinion. I walk away from this album with same feeling with which I walk away from great novels and films. Front man Mikel Jollett talks/sings about the same things that so many other bands do, but in a way that is transcendent and profoundly affecting.

Based out of Los Feliz, Calif. Airborne’s sound is frantic, nerve-stripped and raw. I don’t know exactly how to categorize them except to say they affect a kind of post-punk/new-wave-ish intensity, but don’t succumb to banality of similar-sounding acts.

I hope you catch just how much I love this band. They are worth a listen, even if not what you would normally go for.

With the release of their self-titled album they have broadened their tour and would be worth seeing live if in your area. They’re going to be in Atlanta in September and I can’t wait for that.

The Toxic Airborne Event has been a truly amazing discovery for me and with only one album and and EP has become one of my favorite bands. I hope they continue their current trajectory on future projects.

Check them out. (If you’re an eMusic subscriber, you can get the album there.)