Airborne Toxic Event, the band named after a line in a Don DeLillo novel and sporting a front man who is pushing 40, are back with their ‘difficult second album’ All At Once. Front man Mike Jollet has revealed that the album has been influenced by a spate of close family member’s deaths.

He says “I had a lot of family members pass away in the past couple years, since the last record came about: three grandparents, plus my uncle. You start to see your life from a long view and some of the things that maybe seemed really important before don’t seem quite as important, and some of the things that you didn’t think were as important seem way more important. The birth of a child, the death of a parent, the financial meltdown — it changes things very, very quickly. Suddenly everything is different. A lot of the songs are dealing with that theme in different ways. So, we figured it made sense to call the record that.”

However, he’s probably only got himself to blame if he’s a bit down at the moment – he’s revealed that he’s been hanging out and getting drunk with Robert Smith of The Cure. He says “I got drunk with Robert Smith in a hotel room once — just sat there for three hours drinking beers and chatting — and he told me at 26 that he realized he was going to die, you know, someday.” Getting drunk with the front man of The Cure is hardly the best cure [excuse the pun] we’ve come across for depression.

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