All At Once - The Airborne Toxic Event

The Airborne Toxic Event made another album. Why they chose to do so we will never know.

The angsty music troupe Airborne Toxic Event, the same group that brought about dreary, gothy “Sometime Around Midnight” have finally released another record of songs whose writers have barely grown out of writing tunes about teenage romance, marriage, and other bullshit.

The first half of the album is in constant crescendo, most likely written in that manner purposefully so they could have huge awesome rad musical breakdowns at their live shows. They're all love songs. They even have a song called “All For A Woman.” ATE may be acting as a sweetheart (which isn't necessarily a dreadful trait,) but this song serves as perfect evidence that this band is a series of lyrically uncreative pussies with guitars. (Try listening to Plain White T's “Hey There Delilah,” or their entire discography.)

Sure, there's a niche to be held by these types of bands. Perhaps my disdain is mainly fueled by the fact that I am no longer 13. Lead vocalist/guitarist Mikel Jollett screams and whispers in all the places you would expect him to. Some of the tracks take the form of Mikel giving advice to listeners, such as in “It Doesn't Mean a Thing;” Mikel screams as if in a horror movie about how we'll all be emotionally vulnerable sometimes and we have hearts connected to strings and they're fragile or whatever.

I skipped over “Half of Something Else.” Why? It seemed promising with its introductory spacey instrumentation. However, the first lines were as such: “On the night that we met/ you said you that you wanted something more from me.” Then Mikel sings about some unspecific “her”: her blush, her smile, her face. Mikel goes on to explain that there was nothing he could do. (I'm assuming this is about a relationship he had with a girl.) Then the song builds up, and he remembers how "she SCREAMED” and how she “she CRIED.” It's like he screams to create emotion at the same time the guitarists hit their distortion pedals.

The lyrics hurt my brain too much. The sorta cool power-pop sensibilities of “Strange Girl” were heavily damaged by the rest of what Mikel had to sing. “All I Ever Wanted” plays out exactly like the first half of the album. “The Graveyard Near My House” is darker for ATE as they get a bit more visual and descriptive: he sings about a couple who will be buried next to each other, as their corpses rot. This song about graveyards is arguably the album's most intriguing, however, ATE does not fail to exasperate its trying listeners by giving their visuals an overdone context. It's an acoustic ballad, one of two standard and sigh-filled ways of ending a rock album (the other being an elaborate, lengthy track.)

This album may very well be considered a classic by the middle schooler in your life. But they'll grow out of it someday, and perhaps ATE can follow their lead.

All Eternals Deck - The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats release a good-not-great album that is just as exciting as unremarkable. (Still waiting for another All Hail West Texas, or a John Darnielle/Mike Posner collaboration.)

With over a decade's worth of material and recordings, John Darnielle released a new set of lyrically-centered songs for our enjoyment. These songs make All Eternals Deck, an album of perseverance and power that will surely please fans of Darnielle's Mountain Goats. Though I am enticed by a handful of the album's offerings, I find All Eternals Deck to be a tedious listen.

I will probably sound like many people did when they explained to me why my favorite album of 2010, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, sucked. The inexplicable opinion of these people went something like this: “well, like, a third [or other fraction] of the album was good, but then it just went to shit from there.” I clearly hold bias in defense of one of my favorite bands here, but in regards to the Mountain Goats I was thinking quite the same thing. The album's first track, “Damn These Vampires,” has that type of aggressive, courageous melody where you think you are as emotionally connected with the lyrics as the songwriter. It will have people swingin' and singin' at their shows, and admittedly, it will probably make me do so as well to some degree. This is followed by the moderately-paced, lyrically quick “Birth of Serpents.” This song is cheerful with useful metaphors making it a favorable track.

Songs start being skipped when “Estate Real Sign” comes on. It's INTENSE! Darnielle seems ANGRY! This track, which seems to reflect a sense of tension on the part of the songwriter, lacks the appeal and relevant character of the majority of the Mountain Goats' library. “Age of Kings” does not follow the nature of its predecessor, being a much quieter, mysterious track. However, it appears as an annoying whisper; the kind that you will receive in your ear when being told to wake up before your desired time, as opposed to being whispered a juicy, gossipy secret. “The Autopsy Garland” is the second part to the “Age of Kings” with it's hushed, campfire temperament, although Darnielle seems a bit more, er, unique (?) in this song with his lyrics. I find it amusing. For example, Darnielle sings,“Fat rich men love their twelve-year-olds.” Ha.

“Beautiful Gas Mask” is the next track and it has the same up-lifting, “you can do it!” demeanor as “Damn These Vampires.” Darnielle carries the gas mask metaphor throughout the song, proving that he is able to create resonating songs that have seemingly random objects as their basis; the most powerful lines are probably in the song's conclusion, where Darnielle repeats, “Never sleep/Remember to breathe deep.” Breathe deep, guys.

“High Hawk Season” is one of the most distinct songs on the album. The backing church-like harmonies that are sung during the entirety of the song cause me to recall a local a Capella group known as Throat Culture. The song is so supremely (perhaps painfully for some) goofy that it's true to the semi-unorthodox personality of the Mountain Goats.

My main complaints with the album come with the tracks following this choral great. The album then becomes an uninspired and easily ignorable mess. This isn't to say the songs are REALLY FUCKING BAD, but they are relatively incomprehensible and seem deprived of feeling and memorability. “Soudoire Valley Song” and “Outer Scorpion Squadron” are perturbing piano serenades. “Prowl Great Chain” was hard to define from “Estate Real Sign” save the only slightly muted vocals. Then “For Charles Bronson” was just a fadeout to the moment where this half-sickly porpoise of an album comes up for fresh air with the next-to-last track “Never Quite Free.” Yes, I understand that this song could easily be classified as a “perturbing piano serenade” as well due to its instrumentation. Nonetheless, Darnielle successfully delivers a perfectly sentimental, high-voltage ballad-- this is the song I have in my head when I walk away from this album. Darnielle makes cliché bearable, as he tells listeners what they will never have to fear and what they will always have in the world to appreciate.

Unfortunately, “Never Quite Free” wasn't the perfect ending to the album that Darnielle had in mind, as the smooth “Liza Forever Minnelli” awkwardly attempts to make the album stay awake, like a middle school student who, on one of his first compositions, throws around commas constantly, almost as much as he writes, very, very, agitating run-on sentences.