the airborne toxic event song explanations

NEWS: The Airborne Toxic Event Finally Give Us Song Insights from their S/T Album!

by Mitch Foster • September 10, 2014

The Airborne Toxic Event offers insights into each of the ten songs from their self-titled debut album The Airborne Toxic Event released in 2008. These long awaited explanations and insights were written by Mikel and posted individually over a two week span on the band’s facebook page. It’s no secret that Shows I Go To absolutely loves The Airborne Toxic Event. We’ve had three features on them over the past year and a half:

The Airborne Toxic Event + KONGOS Live Review | February 6 2014

The Airborne Toxic Event + Leagues | Live Review | June 8 2013

The Airborne Toxic Event + KODALINE | Show Preview (still bummed I missed Kodaline) | May 2 2013

With this new information courtesy of Mikel, we found it appropriate to match the song insights with videos. We decided to go back and revive some of their beautiful, old videos, like the incredible acoustic video series they did where they shot a live video for each of the ten songs in various locations – indoors, outdoors, on the sea, in a field, in the back of a van driving down the highway – they’re all pretty fucking awesome. Check them out below as well as some of my favorite Official Videos they released.

1. “Wishing Well”

“Wishing Well: I used to play this song for my neighbor’s cat” -Mikel

2. “Papillon”

“We recorded this song in one take, in friend’s living room, while Daren was on his lunch break from work.” -Mikel

3. “Gasoline”

“Gasoline – The static sound at the top of the song is a finger being placed on a guitar chord then removed. It’s a song about my high school sweetheart, she heard it and later told me to stop telling people it was about “high school sex.” “It was more than that.” True. But you know, artistic license…” -Mikel

4. “Happiness Is Overrated”

“Happiness is Overrated – The acoustic video for this song was shot in my old apartment. We found some red fabric and pinned it to the walls, then played while the one-man camera crew rotated flashlights around to look like spotlights.” – Mikel

5. “Does This Mean You’re Moving On?”

“Does This Mean You’re Moving On? – I played a very early demo of this song for the guy who founded The National’s first record label. “This sounds like Pavement,” he said. First and last time we’ve received this comparison (though Pavement is one my and Steven’s all time favorite bands).” -Mikel

6. “This Is Nowhere”

“This is Nowhere – The eponymous first record was almost called This is Nowhere. In fact, that name remains on all of the final mixes before submitting them to iTunes. At the last minute, it was decided that our band name was long enough and we didn’t need any more verbiage crowding the cover. This song is about the characters in the short story The Crack.” – Mikel

7. “Sometime Around Midnight”

“Sometime Around Midnight – The song is a true story. The band playing the melancholy music was a Silver Lake scene band called Le Switch. The bar was the now-closed Safari Sam’s and the event marked the closure of Sea Level records, a former East Side staple vinyl store.” – Mikel

8. “Something New”

“Something New – I wrote this song in a flurry with three songs about the same person and situation (Happiness is Overrated and Missy were the others). It was a busy week.” -Mikel

9. “Missy”

“Missy is the middle name of the person this song is about. She was from Atlanta, Georgia and she actually was with me while I wrote it, scribbling down the lyrics by hand in a small leather-bound notebook as I sung them.” -Mikel

10. “Innocence”

“Innocence – The intro that was included in the Disney Hall version of the song was actually a completely different song called “Heaven is a Map.” Once I realized the two songs were in the same key, we combined them since one seemed to be like a prelude to the other.” -Mikel