By Glen and Julie
When fans of The Airborne Toxic Event turned in for the night on Feb. 22, 2015, they had no idea they would wake up to Christmas morning.
Sure, they were aware that – depending on their time zone – they’d finally be able to get their hands on their band’s long awaited fourth studio album, Dope Machines, before the following day was through, and that was cause enough for happy dreams. But little did they know, Santa Jollett and his merry band of Airborne Toxic elves had something even more special waiting for them beneath the tree.
The notice came in an early morning e-mail that caused many fans to spew forth their morning coffee in delighted surprise.
We’re happy to announce that tomorrow we will be releasing not one, but two records. The first is a mostly electronic/synth-driven/beat-driven record called Dope Machines, and it will be available everywhere. The second is an acoustic and rock and roll record, called Songs of God and Whiskey. That record will only be available on our website beginning at midnight tonight.
If you’re receiving this email, it’s because you’re on our email list which means you’ve probably been to a show or maybe even that we’ve met you at some point in the past eight years out on the road. After all, that’s how this email list was made—culled over endless hours in venues around the world meeting people, covered in sweat, the room stinking of beer. For that reason, we felt it was only appropriate that we announce this news to you first (it’s not being announced anywhere else for a while) and to tell you that we’re so glad that we’ve gotten to meet you through these years, to see the cities where you live, to share the moments we’ve shared in those sweaty, beer-soaked rooms.
The songs from Songs of God and Whiskey are taken from 10 years of songwriting. Some are quite new, some are quite old. All were recorded by us as a group in a small studio on a hill in Los Angeles (Mount Washington, to be exact). We’re not doing any tricky chicanery on the tracks to make them hard to copy or send or reproduce. We’re quite aware that makes them easy to be traded on file-sharing sites, but hey I guess that’s the world we live in. We trust you’ll be cool and buy it if you want it. It’s seven bucks—the same amount we would get from iTunes if we sold it there.
It would be fashionable to say we decided to forego the long process of promotion and distribution of the modern music industry as a way of doing our part to attempt to realign the music world to be a more artist friendly environment in which the blah blah blah… But it’s not really true. (Even though we very much agree with those principles).
With this, we just had a simple idea in mind: make it and put it out.[i]
The shock of a spur of the moment release was astonishing in its own right. But the juxtaposition to Dope Machines – in every respect: from the lack of fanfare, to the means of production, to the method of distribution, to the musical content itself – made it all the more stunning.
Cynical observers may have wondered whether it was a ploy to placate the vocal minority of fans who had castigated the band for its sharp turn towards electronica. However, while there’s little doubt the second record had that effect, at least in some quarters, Jollett says it was all much simpler (and less sinister) than that.
“You know that crazy impulse of ‘Let’s go get chili cheeseburgers in Vegas right now?’” the bandleader asks. “Well, this album was built from that kind of impulse. We went into the studio, plugged in some mics and recorded a bunch of songs that didn’t fit on Dope Machines as fast as we could.”[ii]
In explaining why the band decided to pass on the more traditional, drawn out recording, production and promotional process in favor of releasing two albums on top of each other, Jollett discloses, “There were a couple reasons. The most important one was just, there were all these songs. And the songs were written and done and they didn’t belong any particular place; they didn’t belong on Such Hot Blood, they didn’t belong on Dope Machines, and I just really wanted to play them.”
Acknowledging that the rest of the band wasn’t as involved in the creation of Dope Machines as they typically would be, he adds, “And then the second thing was, I did most of Dope Machines myself, and there was this sense of, I just wanted to get back in a room with these jokers and play. You know, it had been awhile since we had just played. And Dope Machines is a very involved piece of recording, and a tremendous amount went into it. And then we sort of finished that, and it was like, ‘Let’s just get in the room and turn the mics on and play some songs.’ So that’s what Songs of God and Whiskey was. And I’ve got to say, it was great, really fun to be able to play with these tremendous musicians again and be a band that was just having a good time in a room.”[iii]
Steven Chen says it was all about the fans. “Some of these songs have been kicking around for a long time, and Mikel had been waiting for the right time to put them out in the world. Some of them are brand new. We also wanted to give something back to the fans that no one would be expecting and that was an interesting contrast to the songs on Dope Machines.”[iv]
Jollett agrees, but he also posits that the perceived difference between the two albums that would share a release day may not be as great as it would seem on the surface. “I think it’s fair to say that records two and three were about life on the road, or [the issue of] how distance and so much rapid change make you long for a home. And these two records are closer to the original idea for the band, which is songwriting and musicianship and a commitment to our fans.”[v]
That being said, the means by which the two albums came to life could hardly be more dissimilar. “They were different kinds of challenges,” says Jollett. “Dope Machines took a year to produce. There’s so much detail, so many scored sections that are distinct from one another — it was like creating an electronic symphony or something.[vi] You write all the parts for the oboes and the violins. Then, you have the big day and play it all together as several different movements. Songs of God and Whiskey was more like, ‘Let’s get a bottle of wine and sit around and play.’[vii] It was three weeks in a studio on a hill, plug in the mics and just WAAAAAAAIL!”[viii]
That sense of unbridled spontaneity rings through loud and clear on Songs of God and Whiskey, a most welcome development in light of the heaviness that had seemed to weigh down the band – and Jollett in particular – over the preceding year, what with the firing of Noah Harmon and the resultant fan uproar, quickly followed by the open trepidation of a significant portion of the fan base over the electronically-infused intentions of Dope Machines. While the band had admirably soldiered on through the clamor, there had at times been a sense of having to prove themselves all over again.
In contrast, the pure fun that radiates from Songs of God and Whiskey makes it a joy to listen to and a breath of fresh air. It’s a throwback to the days of five friends in a circle, banging out tunes between laughs and beers – as if Jollett, Chen, Daren Taylor, Anna Bulbrook and Adrian Rodriguez gathered together in a living room with a couple of beat-up old couches, a few guitars and a viola, and emerged 33-minutes later with a new record. As one reviewer described it:
Songs of God and Whiskey, announced for release on the band’s website the night before Dope Machines came out, collects 10 previously unrecorded songs, some old, some new, and sounds like the band rented a big room, filled it with mostly acoustic instruments, some leaky mics, a crateful of cheap-ass wine, whatever recording equipment was lying around, and hastily banged out some lo-fi tunage just because it was fun. To die-hard fans, Dope Machines is a shock that crosses a lot of lines: virtually a solo album by Jollett, it uses outside musicians and backing vocalists, an outside-the-band co-writer on one song, and defies the ethos the band’s been stuck with since their beginnings in 2006 — that they’re a family, “like the Waltons,” as bassist Noah Harmon once told me in 2013. (Ironic, that, since Noah has since been fired.) For those fans, Songs of God and Whiskey is a relief: it’s old-school, folk-tinged Airborne and a true band album, replete with Anna Bulbrook’s lovely viola solos and fills, Steven Chen’s crisply efficient guitar lines, the smart propulsive rhythm section of Daren Taylor and new bassist Adrian Rodriguez, and Jollett all over the place, tossing out lyrics angry and sweet, melancholic and hilarious, in a voice that ranges from a deep bass that rivals the dude from Crash Test Dummies (the “Mmm Mmm” song) to his strong natural baritone to a delicate and surprisingly affecting falsetto.[ix]
To dwell too intently on the hasty recording process would be to do a disservice to the amount of work that no doubt went into the collection, especially given that many of the tunes had been brewing for going on a decade. The lyrical depth, in particular, belies hour upon hour spent alone with pen in hand. From “Poor Isaac” to “April is the Cruelest Month” to “The Fall of Rome,” the record is no light snack: there is a great deal to chew on, as one might expect from alcohol-fueled musings on the Almighty.
Tonally, Songs of God and Whiskey is akin to an album-length bombastic video, with a charming demo quality about it. Hearkening back to the days of Taylor pounding out the beat to “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?” on a car ceiling, or tapping out the rhythm to “Something New” with one hand while steering a boat with the other, there are moments of sheer gratuitous frivolity: Jollett’s playful chuckle at the end of “Cocaine and Abel,” his exaggerated nerd and homey impressions at the start of “A Certain Type of Girl,” and tongue-in-cheek lyrics galore, all presented in a musical smorgasbord of styles that runs the gamut from boisterous rockabilly to barroom country to big band to introspective ballad.
The record opens ferociously with “Poor Isaac,” a track that was previously known to fans as an obscure old Jollett demo that had been kicking around YouTube for years.
For a songwriter so prone to literary references, it’s noteworthy and perhaps a bit surprising that Jollett had not previously drawn from the biblical well. Whether it’s due to a lack of personal familiarity with the material, a distaste for religion or merely that he finds his inspiration elsewhere, you simply won’t find many allusions to scripture in the songs of The Airborne Toxic Event.
That changes with “Poor Isaac,” however, an incisive, angry perspective on the familiar story of Abraham and Isaac. Not surprisingly, Jollett’s take on the tale is a far cry from what you’d typically hear in a Sunday morning sermon. Adopting the point of view of the nearly-slain son, the terror and betrayal of Isaac’s plight bleed through Jollett’s broken voice and bitter words. Openly railing at God, with nary an apology or excuse, “Poor Isaac” is a bold and deadly serious opener, serving notice that while this record may be a romp, it is not without bite.
The irony dial is turned up to eleven for “Cocaine and Abel,” an infectious little ditty about the good, the bad and the morbid of a coke trip. Jollett’s considerable wit is on full display, and never before has such a destructive topic been so danceable, with a brass interlude that only adds to the happy juxtaposition.
Jollett and Bulbrook recall the origins of the song, which predates the official formation of the band. “Anna and I used to just jam at my apartment in Los Feliz,” Jollett recalls. “She and I and this other friend of ours, Hunter, and we would all just sit around and we would drink and we would play songs. And the first time she ever came over, we played this song called ‘Cocaine and Abel.’ She was like, ‘Is this song about the Bible, but kind of about coke, and what the hell is this?’”
Bulbrook laughs. “I was like, ‘How much cocaine do you do, Mikel?’”[x]
Likewise, “A Certain Type of Girl” has a long history, if not quite as long as the two that precede it. A version was recorded for the first album, and a second recording was completed during the All at Once sessions at Sunset Sound.[xi] After failing to make the cut for either of those records, it finally found a suitable home on Songs of God and Whiskey.
The track embodies the playful spirit of the album, opening with Jollett and Taylor just goofing around. “That’s some nice EQ’ing on the paper,” Jollett congratulates his drummer, as the latter scratches out a rhythm with what sounds like a pencil rubbing against a pad. “A Certain Type of Girl” references Jollett’s father and namechecks Jesus before ramping up into a full-on country hoedown, complete with saloon-style piano. It’s positively unlike anything the band had previously produced.
“Change and Change and Change and Change” is strongly reminiscent of “It Doesn’t Mean a Thing,” and indeed would have been right at home on any of The Airborne Toxic Event’s first three albums – save, perhaps, for the horns that pierce the background. The lyrics find Jollett at his self-deprecating best, as the singer wistfully recounts – what else? – a failed relationship: “So I fucked it up like I always do, I was born to be alone/I don’t even know if the words were true that I screamed into the phone.”
A second song previously known through an old YouTube video follows, in “April is the Cruelest Month.” A quiet dirge that one can easily imagine being sung in a darkened bar next to an empty whiskey bottle, it represents Jollett at his most solemn and subdued.
“The Lines of the Cars” is another of Jollett’s earliest compositions. Originally titled “Waves and Radiation,” the lyrics are pulled directly from DeLillo’s White Noise, from whence the band got its name.
Cornel Bonca is a professor of English, intimately familiar with the source material and a TATE fan to boot. He elucidates Jollett’s homage to the classic:
The song’s speaker is pretty obviously Jack Gladney, the death-haunted narrator of DeLillo’s White Noise, and the title refers to the novel’s opening, in which Jack watches a line of station wagons as it winds through an exclusive college campus heading toward the dormitories where students will be dropped off for the new school year. In the book, it’s satire: the station wagons are stuffed to the gills with the gaudy possessions of elite kids. In the song, Jollett has Jack note the kids’ “hopelessly young faces” and their innocence of “the sting of these horrible [death] fears” that haunt both Jack and his wife Babette. (These kids are too young to be haunted.) In the novel, the fear of death is all-consuming, and not even love can mollify it. Jollett, more romantic than DeLillo can afford to be, holds out love as balm, and has Jack assure Babette that “I can feel you in me like my heartbeat and bloodstream in turns.” The song is practically a template of Airborne’s black-bird themes: the solitary self crossing the vastness of psychic space to assuage its fear of death by connecting with someone else.[xii]
“Strangers” brings a little Mexican flair to the proceedings, opening with a Spanish guitar riff and soft maracas keeping time. Once again, Jollett returns to the subject of lost love, but this time with a grimly optimistic perspective. An energetic album highlight and fan favorite, “Strangers” is notable for Jollett’s falsetto and a singalong refrain that calls back to “The Way Home.”
“Why Why Why” is a soft touch. It builds on the themes of the previous track, laced with more tangible regret but ultimately still holding out hope of a happy ending.
And it’s foolish to think you can bury it all in some endless drive to drink
Every person you meet can tell you’re a ship taking water in a storm and you’re starting to sink
If you follow your heart then you’re bound to become something else
You take one hard look at yourself
And you’ll say I’m gonna do everything you said I couldn’t do when I was high
And I’ll write your name in stars across the sky
And we’ll meet somewhere someday and you’ll ask me why
The album winds down with a couple of quiet, thoughtful folk ballads. The first is a lovely acoustic rendition of the poppy, popular Dope Machines track “California.” Stripping the instrumentation down to nothing but quiet guitars and piano allows the exquisite lyrics to take center stage.
Closer “The Fall of Rome” is arguably the defining song of the record. Lyrically, it ranks alongside “The Graveyard Near the House” towards the very top of a long list of Jollett’s most poignant poetry.
“It’s a very personal song,” Jollett divulges. “It was written for a person who I was with for a long time, and kind of about what it’s like to try and have a relationship in the midst of a rock and roll lifestyle where you’re gone a year at a time. And there’s so much headiness to it. It’s romantic… I think she really liked it. I would write songs about her. Or write songs that she particularly enjoyed. And she hated that I’d be gone. And there’s all kinds of stresses that are put onto the relationship.
“You say ‘the fall of Rome’ about things that are these massive events. And you know, I think in the song it’s used as a device, this sort of emotional weight that a relationship can carry in your life. You look back on certain points in your life and you’re like, oh my god, that was a whole thing and when it ended, it was like the fall of Rome. Like, everything in my life changed overnight because me and this person were no longer together.”[xiii]
“The Fall of Rome” dares to ask, What if? More specifically: when you add up all that Jollett has sacrificed for a life on the road and a songbook full of odes to lost love… was it worth it?
As the final, heartbreaking line is delivered, one gets the strong sense that it’s much more than a merely hypothetical question.
***************************
The cover art of Songs of God and Whiskey is as unique as everything else about the project. A whimsical, expressionist painting of Mikel Jollett at a piano, Anna Bulbrook, Steven Chen, and assorted random items (a couple of cats, a bird, a spilled bottle), the image was created by a long-time friend of the band.
“That’s a local artist named Mike Stilkey,” shares Jollett. “He is part of Black Market Collective in Culver City, which is a collective that Shepherd Fairy belonged to, and a bunch of local Los Angeles artists – Shepherd Fairy, who did the big Obama poster that was really famous; almost looks like Russian constructivism. So he’s been part of that scene, and he’s a very prominent artist in Los Angeles, and he’s a friend, and we asked him if he would do a specialty cover for our record, and so he painted that for us.”[xiv]
Stilkey, it should be noted, had previously been invited by the band to display his artwork at the All I Ever Wanted show at Disney Concert Hall in 2009; his work is seen briefly in the film and he gets a shout out during the “Missy” rollcall. A quick scan through his gallery reveals a number of pieces that are very close in style to the God and Whiskey artwork; in fact, the cover image was actually adapted from a 2008 piece.
The Airborne Toxic Event’s unorthodox approach to the release of the album ensured that the cover would only ever be viewed on screen. As promised, the record was initially available solely as a digital download through the band’s web store, in conjunction with a purchase of Dope Machines in physical format. Though its availability was expanded a couple months later when it was added to iTunes and other online outlets, it has never been released on CD or vinyl.
The why and how of the mode of distribution undoubtedly owes a great deal to the reaction of Epic Records to the group’s sudden decision to release a second record on the back of the one the label had been promoting for months, and the band’s need to appease their partners. Though Jollett has generally downplayed their response (“They didn’t mind, which was very cool,” he said on one occasion; “Modest Mouse and us are the only rock bands on the label so I think they give us some room to, well, be rock bands that do strange shit”),[xv] the truth is probably closer to his admission in a more unguarded moment: “They were like, ‘What the fuck!’”[xvi]
Airborne manager Pete Galli provides more background, saying that Songs of God and Whiskey did not exist a month before it hit virtual shelves. “The band recorded it in 3 weeks. We mastered it [Feb. 23], finishing at 3pm LA time and then it was for sale at 9pm LA time. Our label Epic (Sony) was very supportive, but they are unable, like any major, to turn it around on iTunes or other outlets that quickly. Instead, they were kind enough to let us sell it directly to fans on our store, as long as it was bundled with Dope Machines.”[xvii]
Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, and despite the low, $7 price tag on God and Whiskey, some fans who had already pre-ordered Dope Machines (at the band’s own request) through other outlets balked at the requirement to purchase a second copy of the latter to get their hands on the former. And so, for the third time in eight months, Jollett and his cohorts found themselves under heavy fire from many of their own fans, with some accusing the band of false advertising,[xviii] and others refusing to buy Songs of God and Whiskey out of principle.
Those who took this route did so to their own detriment, missing out on The Airborne Toxic Event’s most consistently acclaimed album since All at Once. And in spite of the backlash, the record did better than expected commercially. Despite receiving zero advance publicity, when Songs of God and Whiskey hit the wider digital market on April 27, it came out of the gates strong, reaching #10 on iTunes’ Alternative Albums chart in the first 24 hours, #9 on Amazon’s alternative downloads list and #53 among all Amazon albums – actually surpassing the peaks reached by the heavily promoted Dope Machines.
But to focus on this is to miss the point in spectacular fashion. Songs of God and Whiskey was never about sales numbers; if it was, it never would have been released in the manner it was.
Songs of God and Whiskey was The Airborne Toxic Event’s gift to their fans. It may also have been their greatest gift to themselves: a reminder of why any of them signed up for this crazy adventure in the first place.
< Previous (Chapter 38: Dope Machines) |
Notes:
[i] The Airborne Toxic Event band mailing, Feb. 23, 2015.
[ii] Jed Gottlieb, “‘Dope’ test: Change in styles hasn’t been Toxic for rock band,” Boston Herald, (Mar. 14, 2015), http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/music_news/2015/03/dope_test_change_in_styles_hasn_t_been_toxic_for_rock_band.
[iii] Mikel Jollett Interview, Halo Halo, https://youtu.be/y-ut1MiQoWg.
[iv] Treena Derrick (Ed.), “Highlights from The Airborne Toxic Event’s AMA,” This Is Nowhere, (Feb. 25, 2015), https://thisisnowhere.com/2015/02/25/highlights-from-the-airborne-toxic-events-ama/.
[v] Derrick.
[vi] Derrick.
[vii] Jeff Niesel, “The Airborne Toxic Event’s Mikel Jollett Flexes Creative Muscles on Two New Albums,” Cleveland Scene, (Mar. 9, 2015), http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2015/03/09/the-airbone-toxic-events-mikel-jollett-flexes-creative-muscles-on-two-new-albums.
[viii] Derrick.
[ix] Cornel Bonca, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird,” Los Angeles Review of Books, (Apr. 4, 2015), https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/thirteen-ways-looking-black-bird.
[x] Wendy Rollins, “#1045BlockParty Backstage With The Airborne Toxic Event,” Radio 104.5, (May 2015), http://www.radio1045.com/onair/off-the-air-wendy-rollins-36114/1045blockparty-backstage-with-the-airborne-toxic-13564776/.
[xi] Rollins.
[xii] Bonca.
[xiii] Jacob Margolis and Alex Cohen, “KPCC exclusive with The Airborne Toxic Event’s Mikel Jollett,” Take Two, (Feb. 24, 2015), http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/02/24/41688/kpcc-exclusive-with-the-airborne-toxic-event-s-mik/.
[xiv] “The Airborne Toxic Event Interview,” Zu Gast im radioeins Studio, (Apr. 2015).
[xv] Gottlieb.
[xvi] Niesel.
[xvii] Amanda Keeler, “The Airborne Toxic Event performs at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland,” AXS, (Mar. 17, 2015), http://www.axs.com/the-airborne-toxic-event-performs-at-trinity-cathedral-in-cleveland-44713.
[xviii] Keeler.
Julie publishes musingsfromboston.com, a music blog with the bipolar personality of wannabe philosopher and charlatan music critic, where she is just as likely to review the audience as she is the band. Her first Airborne show was at a lingerie party hosted by WFNX at an Irish-Mexican bar in Boston’s financial district. She does her best to live by the motto “only one who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible.”
Glen is the founder and editor of This Is Nowhere. He’s grateful for an understanding wife and kids who indulge his silly compulsion to chase a band all over the Pacific Northwest (and occasionally beyond) every time the opportunity arises.