An artist can never foresee what the next step in his/her career is going to be, because very often and inevitably, through time, plans do change, because life changes around us.
When American cult Rock Band The Airborne Toxic Event released their last studio album called Hollywood Park, back in 2020, a record where the band's chief songwriter and frontman Mikel Jollett delved heavily on the early stages of his life and in particular, about his relationship with Jollett's father, an ex con man and ex heroin addict, with some of the songs written from the perspective of Jollett's father, it would have perhaps been an easy decision to write more about this difficult family dynamic on a follow-up record, given the consensus received from fans and press, when Hollywood Park got released.
Instead, the new The Airborne Toxic Event album just released and called Glory, serves lyrically a much broader life scenarios, pertinent, among the themes touched on the album, to challenging times that couples can go through, or focusing on topics like friendship and disillusions, tough upbringing and about learning lessons in life in the hard way, to be able then to become a better person.
Naturally, for those that have followed the career of The Airborne Toxic Event since the very beginning back in 2006, like our website has, while the depth of Mikel Jollett's songwriting and his prodigious singing voice has always been and still is a constant, wonderful certainty, it's the eclectic style of arrangements chosen for the 9 songs included into Glory that constitute the real surprise to the American collective's new record.
Together with their trademark, anthemic Rock'N'Roll style, expressed with the usual power and swagger on songs like the album's opener Our Own Thunder Road, for example, the T.A.T.E. have decided, for Glory, to match, organically, different styles and arrangements dictated by the themes they touched upon in their new songs with great taste and refinery, moving from Rock ballads to more Folk-like semi-acoustic playing styles, or from enigmatic Techno-Rock to even Soul, the whole always delivered with remarkable artistic ability and lyrical grace.
The T.A.T.E. are in superb form, on their new record and the overall musicianship expressed by the whole band is highly impressive, showing a constant growth bith on a songwriting and sonic level. Mikel Jollett (lead vocals, guitars, keyboards) pens some real gems, throughout the full duration of Glory, like the album's title-track itself, or Jenny and The Walk, among others and his singing style gets better and better on each passing album. Daren Taylor on drums is the propulsive heart of the collective's songs, with some highly impressive performances noticed especially on songs like Hole In My Heart or Frank Pigg, just to mention a few. Adrian Rodriguez (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Steven Chen (guitars, keyboards) bring both such a strong musical fluidity to the sound of the band, with some impressive instrumental passages especially on songs like Frank Pigg and Glory, in our personal opinion.
We may have been waiting for 4 years, for a The Airborne Toxic Event new album but it most certainly wasn't in vain. Glory is a record that incorporates inspired songs containing robust sounds and lyrical themes related to human fragility written, played and sang phenomenally by the American Rock collective. Another strong and highly convincing sonic snapshot to add to the songbook of one of the most loved and talented bands of the contemporary music scene.
Glory is out now and is available to be purchased via Apple Music