TripWire

I don't know about anyone else but I dig this album as a whole and I'm not afraid to admit it. Yeah ok, it's not 100% original, but it's good melody and stands up to repeated listens.
And maybe people compare them to JEW, but for me I will take this over what JEW has been putting out the last few albums.

Apparently though pitchfork decided to take a shit on them..looks like the reviewer is just pissed they are making it big and wants to squash them with a low rating.
Review (1.4)

Anyone else like them?

cungar

I've heard them on 100.3 in LA. Not sure who JEW is. They remind me of The Arcade Fire. In fact I thought the song they played was the Arcade Fire.

jdpatri

I like Airborne Toxic Event quite a lot. I've become increasingly skeptical of Pitchfork's ratings... well, mostly because the CDs that they masturbate all over generally lack enough musicality to make them worthwhile. There's a time and place for noise and experimentation, but I still believe there's got to be something inherently listenable about the music itself.

But yeah, ATE is some good stuff.

TripWire

ah sorry, JEW is Jimmy Eat World. Yeah I'm all for noise and experimentation, but a lot of the stuff they praise is the same kind of noise and experimentation that could be considered just as unoriginal. It's like the reviewer points our how lame the lyrics, you can pretty much do that with any band's lyrics and have some kind of criticism. It's like if he hated it so bad, maybe a 4 or something, but come on a 1.6?

TripWire

hah nice...

An Open Letter to Pitchfork Media from the Airborne Toxic Event

By The Airborne Toxic Event • September 17, 2008

Dear Ian,

Thanks for your review of our record. It’s clear that you are a good writer and it’s clear that you took a lot of time giving us a thorough slagging on the site. We are fans of Pitchfork. And it’s fun to slag off bands. It’s like a sport — kind of part of the deal when you decide to be in a rock band. (That review of Jet where the monkey pees in his own mouth was about the funniest piece of band-slagging we’ve ever seen.)

We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.

Plus, the variation of opinions on our record has bordered on absurd. 80 percent of what’s been said has been positive, a few reviews have remained on the fence and a few (such as yours) have been aggressively harsh. We tend not to put a lot of stock in this stuff, but the sheer disagreement of opinion makes for fascinating (if not a bit narcissistic) reading.

And anyway we have to admit that we found ourselves oddly flattered by your review. I mean, 1.6? That is not faint praise. That is not a humdrum slagging. That is serious fist-pounding, shoe-stomping anger. Many publications said this was among the best records of the year. You seem to think it’s among the worst. That is so much better than faint praise.

You compare us to a lot of really great bands (Arcade Fire, the National, Bright Eyes, Bruce Springsteen) and even if your intention was to cut us down, you end up describing us as: “lyrically moody, musically sumptuous and dramatic.” One is left only to conclude that you must think those things are bad.

We love indie rock and we know full well that Pitchfork doesn’t so much critique bands as critique a band’s ability to match a certain indie rock aesthetic. We don’t match it. It’s true that the events described in these songs really happened. It’s true we wrote about them in ways that make us look bad. (Sometimes in life you are the hero, and sometimes, you are the cuckold. Sometimes you’re screaming about your worst fears, your most vicious jealousies and failures. Such is life.) It’s also true that the record isn’t ironic or quirky or fey or disinterested or buried beneath mountains of guitar noodling.

As writers, we admire your tenacity and commitment to your tone (even though you do go too far with your assumptions about us). You’re wrong about our intentions, you’re wrong about how this band came together, you don’t seem to get the storytelling or the catharsis or the humor in the songs, and you clearly have some misconceptions about who we are as a band and who we are as people.

But it also seems to have very little to do with us. Much of your piece reads less like a record review and more like a diatribe against a set of ill-considered and borderline offensive preconceptions about Los Angeles. Los Angeles has an extremely vibrant blogging community, Silver Lake is a very close-knit rock scene. We are just one band among many. (And by the way, L.A. does have a flagship indie rock band: they’re called Silversun Pickups). We cut our teeth at Spaceland and the Echo and have nothing to do with whatever wayward ideas you have about the Sunset Strip. That’s just bad journalism.

But that is the nature of this sort of thing. It’s always based on incomplete information. Pitchfork has slagged many, many bands we admire (Dr. Dog, the Flaming Lips, Silversun Pickups, Cold War Kids, Black Kids, Bright Eyes [ironic, no?] just to name a few), so now we’re among them. Great.

This band was borne of some very very dark days and the truth is that there is something exciting about just being part of this kind of thing. There’s this long history of dialogue between bands and writers so it’s a bit of a thrill that you have such a strong opinion about us.

We hear you live in Los Angeles. We’d love for you to come to a show sometime and see what we’re doing with these lyrically moody and dramatic songs. You seem like a true believer when it comes to music and writing so we honestly think we can’t be too far apart. In any case, it would make for a good story.

all our best–

Mikel, Steven, Anna, Daren, Noah
the Airborne Toxic Event

jrneeley

That was great.

ATE's debut is easily in my top 5 of 2008. There show in NC tomorrow (well now it's today) was cancelled, but I wouldn't have been able to make it anyways with work, but I hope I have a chance to see them live soon.

Dan1boy

I saw these guys open up for the Fratellis a few weeks ago and they weren't too bad...fairly impressed actually.

The problem is...I forgot about them until right now, after reading this thread. And I feel kinda bad