BLACK ANGELS

WECB will be interviewing the Black Angels at their show at the Paradise on Tuesday, so stay tuned!
In the mean time, check out the music video for their new song, "Telephone."
Happy Halloweekend!

Google Earth and CMJ 2010

A collection of the venues we interacted with over the course of this year's CMJ Marathon. We highlighted some of our favorite artists from week, and located the places where we were denied due to age restrictions. We had a wonderful time and met a lot of great people. Hells yea for college radio.

Idlewild - Post Electric Blues

These days, good bands are deviating more and more towards the “indie sound”. Ten years ago this was extremely interesting and original, yet today every indie band sounds the same. It’s reached such a point of over saturation that now bands are just boring to listen to. Sadly this is what I felt while listening to Idlewild’s new album, Post Electric Blues. I’ve heard and liked many of Idlewild’s old songs, which have a distinctive quirkiness and sweetness to them. Yet this album is filled with typical rock songs that are honestly quite boring. All of the songs give out an initial feeling of excitement but then they all die out into predictable melodies. They have no real fire to them because they are completely formulaic. Even the drum beats are the standard beat of every rock song you’ve already heard. Overall the album is like the song, “To be forgotten”. After hearing the entire album I felt indifferent towards what I heard and couldn’t even remember an individual song that stood out. Nevertheless if you are still really into the indie sound, the songs “Take me back in time” and “Readers & Writers” are pretty good. Post Electric Blues is not a bad album, but we all need to hear something new.

J+J+J - High Voltage Feast is Almost Here

J+J+J is an electronic duo, turned couple, turned husband and wife named Joanna (synth and vocals) and Johny (synth). This left me to question what the third ‘J’ in the name stood for, and after a tiny bit of research I found out that they met at a church parking lot concert, the third J is for Jesus.

To put it simply, J+J+J’s new album High Voltage Feast is Almost Here falls under the category too many albums do. That is the: “Wow there are some great instrumentals… but holy hell the vocals suck so hard,” category (I am sure we are all familiar with this one, and can name at least one band that falls within it.)

Really though, when each track began I found myself getting sucked into what I thought was going to be an OUTSTANDING, simple, throwback electronic track. Having personally just started fooling around with analog equipment to generate electronic beats, I have a newfound ear for the work that went into the beats on this album. Each track on the album has a different instrumental aesthetic that is created with these synthesizers…. But this is all blown out of the water once the vocals from Joanna come in. This can't be chalked up to this being a D.I.Y. band or anything... I am just going to be blunt: they are flat, off key, and remind me of Gravy Train!!! gone wrong-er.

So, if you seriously miss Gravy Train!!! I would recommend downloading this album, if you aren't… just pass it by.