All at Once by The Airborne Toxic Event

All at Once, the Airborne Toxic Event's second studio album, came out on Island on April 26, 2011, with Dave Sardy producing, and the Los Angeles band sound determined to get bigger without getting any less wounded. Songwriter Mikel Jollett described the debut as nothing but sad songs about girls; this time, he said, there were only three of those. The rest range wider, the keyboards are cranked up along with everything else, and a few acoustic numbers pull the volume back down.

Jollett called nearly all of it autobiographical. The exception is "Welcome to Your Wedding Day", written in response to the Deh Bala wedding party bombing and aimed at the notion that people ought to be grateful for the bombs. Jollett sings like every line is a matter of life and death, with fellow founder Steven Chen on guitar and keyboards, and Sardy gives it an arena-ready gleam. "Changing" is the song radio grabbed hold of, with "All I Ever Wanted" close behind; Such Hot Blood came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.