Day 65 (May 23): The Airborne Toxic Event - The Common Touch

The Airborne Toxic Event gets literary on Hollywood Park | Album ...Keeping up to date with music seems exhausting at the moment. For one, there's the endless conveyor belt of embarrassing milkshake duck moments - oh no, there goes Lana del Rey! Wait, didn't Doja Cat only get popular a few weeks ago? Even the new music seems stressful. The new 1975 album has 22 tracks? Yeesh.

I am doing my best to try and navigate all of that, which leads me to the unfortunate position of becoming a hipster. Hey, did you know there was an actually good alternative album that came out yesterday that you probably didn't realise existed? Well, I did - I'm not like other boys (I dislike myself).

Today's song of the day comes from that album, The Airborne Toxic Event's Hollywood Park. These guys are primarily famous for one song, the ultra-dramatic ultra-moody "Sometime Around Midnight" (it's a lot of emotional shouting), but I think "The Common Touch", and the entire album it belongs to, proves they ain't one hit wonders.

It's anthemic and thoughtful, cathartic and plain entertaining. It has many delicious riffs. Their powers of emotional shouting are put to excellent use. And, oh lordy, does a song about the joys of communal experiences that literally refers to touch hit different at the moment. Now that's some new music.


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