Audio By Carbonatix
The Airborne Toxic Event’s pulsing, chilly music — with the moody sweep and swirling keyboards of ’80s dark-wave revivalists such as the Killers and Interpol — moves with majestic aplomb. (Frontman Mikel Jollett even cites the Smiths in “Strange Girl,” off last month’s second album, All At Once.) Once an aspiring novelist, Jollett dove into music after his girlfriend broke up with him around the same time that he was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder and his mother was diagnosed with cancer. All at Once retains the band’s initial cinematic mope-pop grandeur, but producer Dave Sardy (of Jet and Snow Patrol) reduces the languor, punching up the vitality and pace to counterbalance the gloom — but not too much. Don’t miss Southern California peers Voxhaul Broadcast, whose crackling, keenly layered theatrical pop recalls White Rabbits and the Walkmen on the band’s latest, Timing Is Everything
Mon., June 13, 8 p.m., 2011
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