The Airborne Toxic Event

While playing a lunchtime gig today at a hotel restaurant in downtown LA, I ran into a violinist that I performed with once while I was at Juilliard. He now plays in a LA-based cutting edge string quartet that commissions tons of new music and experimental stuff called The Calder Quartet, although they play Mozart just as well. He mentioned that they had taped for Jimmy Kimmel last night, and in checking out the quartet website, I discovered that they are actually playing with the indie rock band The Airborne Toxic Event. His sister plays viola/keyboard for this band- and they totally rock! (Incidentally, she went to Columbia and was class of '04.)

I checked out The Airborne Toxic Event on myspace and I can't stop listening to them. Depressing, poetic lyrics are covered under an upbeat, guitar-driven texture with occasional richness added by strings a la Belle and Sebastian. They hail from Los Feliz, a Los Angeles area adjacent to ours that, along with Silver Lake, is the bastion of numerous indie bands, many of which make it to the top.

I love the role that the quartet plays in this version of "Sometime Around Midnight," bow hairs flying and everything! The string sound in the rock genre is usually reserved for more melancholy, plaintive, slow songs, but here is proof that classical musicians can totally rock out.