Eastern Conference Champions is an indie rock band originally from Philadelphia, PA. Once signed with Suretone Records, they have released a handful of EPs and one full length album. They have an interesting sound – reminds me of Coldplay mixed with a toy I had in the 80′s.
The band’s performance was pretty mellow, which meshed well with the slower songs. I liked the music, however, the singer’s, Josh Ostrander, voice drove me a bit nuts. This is where my reference to a toy I had in the 80′s comes in. His voice reminds me of every other “unique” indie rock male singer, with a bit of Beaker (Jim Henson style) thrown in.
I felt like the performance needed a little bit more energy during the upbeat songs. It was a bit too mellow a bit too long. At one point they picked a random guy out of the audience to come up on stage and hold their gear for them. It got a stranger when the singer sang lovingly to the guy. Hmm…
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Links is a band from Silverlake who, well, sound to me like they may be confused. They describe themselves as “Soul with a twist of blues and a shout of rock” – uhm..what does that mean?
Links opened with a very psychedelic sounding song then quickly switched over to boy band-ish sounding (“with a shout of rock”). A crowd of girls screetching at the front between each song was sure to add to the boy band label. I am at a loss for words about how I feel about this band. My notes consisted of “ugly cowboy boots, grinding guitars?, boy band?”. Guess I can clarify…
Ugly Boots – They all had ugly boots on. The end. I actually did notice the bands “look”. It didn’t really fit their music. They looked like young children dressed as the exact same cowboy.
Grinding Guitars – At one point the bassist and the guitarist went up to each other to “rock out”, but just ended up looking like they were dry humping each other with a guitar buffer.
Boy Band – See above, think Backstreet Boys (see below).
Something that did stand out to me is that, even though the band needs a bit of organization, the leader singer can sing. He has an amazing, powerful voice. The performance was also high energy and all band members gave their all through the whole set. Good job, kids.
I tried to research a bit about this band and found only a handful of info and some crappy videos. Searching for links with information about “Links” is a bit difficult. It’s like searching for the band “The Used” and getting pages of links for used cars. Eh… On that note, the end.
