Airborne Toxic Event Get 'Louder' on Second Album

In January 2010, when the Airborne Toxic Event had just finished a run of 354 shows in support of their first album, frontman Mikel Jollett predicted that their second LP would be about life on the road. Now that the record is finished, Jollett tells Spinner that's not exactly the case.

"I'd say three or four of them are actual road songs. One's about my parents, one is about the Cure," he says. "We didn't choose any particular dogma. We weren't like 'we're going to make a concept record about the mating pattern of bees.'"

While the band isn't making any extreme variations on the album, which is tentatively due in January 2011 and may be called 'All At Once,' Jollett points out several differences in the new material.

"We didn't try to recreate the first record. It definitely sounds different. There's probably a couple songs that could've been on the first record. It's louder than the first record ever was but then it's quieter than the first record ever was. There's way more keyboards than there were on the last record, then there are a couple of acoustic songs, and there weren't any on the last record. It's got a little bit of a broader range in terms of the instrumentation."

Another change is that this album is that Jollett is no longer writing about the devastating breakup he went through and inspired him to write such heartbreakers as 'Sometime Around Midnight' and 'Innocence.' "If you compare it to the first record, there are only three sad songs about girls," he says. "The entire first record was sad songs about girls, but there are echoes of that idea in every one of the songs except for two."

What has been drastically different for the band is getting to record in a proper studio with producer Dave Sardy, who's worked with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Oasis and Band of Horses.

"Daren [Taylor, drummer] had two hours off for lunch from his job, so we'd go to the studio at [producer] Pete Min's house and whatever guitar we'd play happened to be the one that was plugged in," Jollett says. "Half of the songs on that record were in one take. It's definitely a different experience. There are good things about that too. It's hard to take off the cuff and get lost in making a record when there are too many people, too many steps. A song's a song. As long as the mikes are on, usually you're alright."

Airborne Toxic Event are currently on the road with the Calder Quartet. Their new concert CD/DVD, 'All I Ever Wanted: Live From the Walt Disney Concert Hall' is due out Sept. 28 via Island.