Neon Trees recently took the stage for Fresh 102.7/New York’s Up Close & Personal concert series. Noticeably missing was 8-month pregnant drummer Elaine Bradley, who is in France, while the rest of the band including fill-in drummer John Buckner play gigs and promote their new album Picture Show.

Frontman Tyler Glenn said when he was writing songs for the album he was focused on the idea of escaping reality, which led to titling the album Picture Show.

“I was writing a lot about not wanting to be who I was, and wanting to escape it,” he said. “I think when you go to the movies, you kind of see someone else’s life and pretend, so I took that feeling and ran with it and I’m proud of what we did. I really love our record.”

Their first single off the new album, “Everybody Talks,” was featured in a Buick commercial which Tyler said helped make the song a huge hit.

“It helped, it really did. A lot of people really hated it, a lot of basketball fans really hated us during March Madness, and that’s fantastic because everybody does talk,” he said.

Continuing the make-believe trend, Tyler said he wrote a song called “I Am The D.J.,” which is about the last radio D.J. left on earth trying to find love.

“Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, and really classic songwriters, they used to make up stories and I kind of took that approach because I didn’t want to write about anything I was going through,” he said. “So I decided to write a short story about the last radio disc jockey on earth trying to find his love and he’s playing their song and it’s kind of a romantic.”

Neon Trees continue to celebrate their album release as current single “Everybody Talks” just reached a milestone.

We just heard “Everybody Talks” has hit the 1 million aka platinum sales mark. Thanks to our fans and supporters! — Neon Trees (@neontrees) July 9, 2012

-Sarah Scroggins, Fresh 102.7/New York