Something really weird is going on with the Airborne Toxic Event, like, next-level kinda stuff. All the sudden the band that many jealous Angelenos love to hate — and just as many pine to chant along with — is selling out East Coast venues, is stomping across Europe and making legit waves (and hyperbolic British press declarations), is nipping at the top of the iTunes charts. Could it be that the Airborne Toxic Event, L.A.'s most polarizing band right now, will get the last laugh? Probably, but singer Mikel Jollett probably won't care. He's too busy building defiant lyrical monologues that excavate his emotional states. “I got this heavy debt/I've got nothing left/but this daunting weight/slung 'round my neck,” he sings on “Something New.” If Silver Lake haters can't figure out why such sentiments might leap out of the underground and into the ears and hearts of a much bigger audience, maybe their complicated haircuts are jumbling up their perception. Do you want new wave or do you want the truth?

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