CMJ Music Marathon 2008 Day 4: Longwave

Hailing from Brooklyn gave this four-piece a CMJ home-field advantage. Unfortunately they never really took advantage of it, except for one obnoxious girl in the front row who shrieked for every song. Playing heavily guitar driven rock with harmonies that would gradually shift in and out of focus, the lead singer dwelled on falsetto-driven vocals that seemed to contradict his taste for distortion penetrating guitar solos. The second guitarist mostly focused on turning his reverb way up and engineering really slow notes that would dispel into layers of granular background noise. The latter he achieved by spending a decent amount of time hunched over on his knees and fiddling with an assortment of knobs. The group’s frontman was the only member who seemed to process any sort of emotion or expression, the others just listlessly thrumming along in perfect rhythm. This made it difficult to respond in any positive way to their innocuous and placid sound. That is, unless you were already a groupie.