Their moment is now

SOMEDAY I’m going to write it all down. No, I mean write it all down.

Not just how the Airborne Toxic Event got its odd name (from Don DeLillo’s novel “White Noise”), or how Deadly Syndrome sounds like Wolf Parade-meets-Cold War Kids, or how when you close your eyes the singing voice of Castledoor’s Nate Cole echoes equal parts Jeff Buckley, Lindsey Buckingham and Paul Simon.

Helpful tidbits, sure, but it all seems such detritus considering the manner in which each of those fledgling indie rock bands, in their own distinctive ways, embody the L.A. scene’s communal embrace. The bands spent 2007 playing the small clubs of Silver Lake and Hollywood, making fans with their intensely personal music. Music that offers -- in a time of worldwide calamity, in a city ruled by the cult of celebrity, in an age in which technology turns us into twitching samplers of anything at our fingertips -- more kinship than all your thumbnailed friends on MySpace.

Whether it’s Airborne’s danceable post-punk, Castledoor’s sweetly yearning pop or the Deadly Syndrome’s angsty chaos, their music is nothing if not of the moment.

“The world is so confusing. . . . Maybe it always has been, but especially now because the media is everywhere and there’s so much of it,” says Mikel Jollett, the former music journalist and aspiring novelist who fronts the Airborne Toxic Event. “It’s kind of mind-numbing. We don’t know anything except we’re all here.”

Which is why, a few minutes after midnight one night early this year at the Echo -- my curiosity piqued by a quintet with a viola player and a bassist who occasionally plays his instrument with a bow -- I found myself (almost) dancing to “Wishing Well,” a song about suicide.

Jollett’s decision to set aside finishing his novel (“now collecting dust under a drum bin,” he says) and found the band with drummer Daren Taylor came after a series of crises that included his mother’s illness and lesser health problems of his own. His literary take on songwriting and his band’s art-school sensibility carry an urgent message: Celebrate life now (and not just by text message), before somebody unplugs you.

“I wish when we tour we could play in people’s houses,” he says. “I know that after shows people will come up to me and tell me about themselves, what’s happening in their lives. . . . It’s really uplifting. I get e-mails from 14-year-old kids, and what can I say? Go out and live. Enjoy life. Burn your Korn CDs.”

Jollett, Taylor and bandmates Anna Bulbrook, Noah Harmon and Steven Chen -- who played their first show only one year ago -- have not yet signed a record deal but are finishing up recording their debut album. Their EP has earned them some radio play (including spins on KROQ and Indie 103), and their rising visibility has cemented the bonds among friends.

“Now I feel like we’re a bunch of shipwrecked siblings,” Jollett says.

The familial feel is literal in Castledoor, a six-piece founded by singer-guitarists Cole and Gabe Combs that grew to include their wives, Lisa and Coury, respectively, and Brandon Schwartzel and Joel Plotnik. If their penchant for neo-hippie fashion doesn’t get your attention, their folk-pop melodies -- carried by Cole’s voice -- will.

I was actually taken aback the first time I heard them at the Silverlake Lounge, where singers go to die, either under the weight of oppressive volume or the incessant chatter of the crowd. There was Cole, cutting through it all, at once oblivious and optimistic.

“When I write the songs it doesn’t feel that way at all,” Cole says, “but onstage we project this optimism -- though sometimes I think we’re just trying to convince ourselves that everything is gonna be OK.”

Castledoor’s growing audiences, culled from a year of playing every gig the band could land, seem to seek that reassurance too.

“In a way, it’s curing the symptom without getting to the root of the problem,” Cole says. “Playing is the best moment we can give them. If you were the answer for 30 or 45 minutes, you were the answer.”

The band itself might turn out to be one answer for Cole and Combs, who as youngsters were singers in the major-label act Plus One. Intent on making their own music, they moved to Southern California and fell into a scene full of bands that share little sonically but support one another enthusiastically. In fact, Castledoor (also not signed to a record deal) is recording an album produced by one of the forebears of that scene, Aaron Espinoza of Earlimart.

“Nobody seems to worry about who’s gonna be the next big band from Silver Lake,” Cole says. “In a way, we’re celebrating our uniqueness.”

Rarely was such uniqueness more apparent than the first time I ran across the Deadly Syndrome at Safari Sam’s -- there, propped up around the stage, were white-painted cardboard cutouts of ghosts. Gimmickry? That was the first impression.

“At first we did it because we wanted to stand out onstage,” drummer Jesse Hoy says. “Even if we were awful, people would go home and say, ‘Hey, there was one band that had cutouts.’ ”

But the ghosts onstage -- and in songs such as “I Hope I Become a Ghost” -- symbolize something a little weightier. “It’s all about embracing your fears,” singer Chris Richard says. And that embrace, combined with the Deadly Syndrome’s deliriously chaotic live show, make the quartet an irresistible remedy for isolation. The jaunty pop song “Eucalyptus” starts with a simple step-down melody and builds into a freakout of a finish, with Hoy, Richard, Mike Hughes and Will Etling surrounding Hoy’s kit and pounding out apoplectic rhythms.

In a year and a half, the Deadly Syndrome grew from club novelty to a berth on the lineup of the LA Weekly Detour Festival; its debut album, “The Ortolan” (Dim Mak), is already out.

“It’s such a weird, tangible thing that is happening to us,” Hoy says. “Not long ago, it was like, ‘Another Sunday project! We have more poster board!’

“I can remember when I first moved here and I went to see the Silversun Pickups. Seeing all that and thinking, ‘That’s the L.A. scene.’ I wondered whether we could ever be like that.”

-- Kevin.Bronson@latimes.com

--

ON THE WEB

THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT: www.myspace.com/ theairbornetoxicevent

CASTLEDOOR: www.myspace.com/ castledoormusic

THE DEADLY SYNDROME: www.thedeadlysyndrome.com

--

ALSO CHECK OUT:

The spastic experimentalism of the Pity Party [ www.myspace.com/thepityparty]. . . . The swampy folk-blues of Delta Spirit [ www.deltaspirit.net]. . . .

ALSO CHECK OUT:

. . . . The irascible pop of the Mulhollands [ www.myspace.com/themulhollands]. . . . The twang noir of Miss Derringer [ www.missderringer.com]. . . .

ALSO CHECK OUT:

. . . . The soul-infused rock of Voxhaul Broadcast [ www.myspace.com/voxhaulbroadcast]