Fallout Recordings

[Website] | [MySpace] | [Music] | [Videos] | [Tours]

Eastern Conference Champions

I guess that subterranean venues are the same the world over, the 229 Club is not exceptional as a venue, long, narrow with a stage at the near end as your enter. The low ceiling drives down the sound so that it sounds like a concrete mixer. Not auspicious then for three wiry chaps from Philadelphia PA USA, who are over here on a whistle stop tour of small venues to mark their signing to one of the UK’s foremost labels for nurturing the sort of acts that kick against convention.

These three chaps are EASTERN CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS and they are the latest signing to Fallout Recordings with a single ‘Single Sedative’ out in January.

Tonight it’s Vern Z’s birthday. Vern is ECC’s bass player and sampler, and sports the greatest Derek Smalls walrus ‘tash that Great Portland Street has seen since the days of the great Edwardian dandies. He’s having a good time and it shows. It’s not a sell-out but that’s when you see the real cut of a bands jib and there’s a cocky assuredness about ECC that says damn it, packed stadium or a two man and a dog – we’ll give it 100%.

Vocalist, the tall and lean Josh Ostrander, cuts a more laid back swagger and his nasally vocals twist the songs into angular shapes. He looks not unlike an unshaven Adam Sandler and carries that sort of gum chewing indifference to situations that seems to allow him to float untroubled above it all.

Completing the ensemble, is the hard working Greg Lyons on drums (and synths) whose jackhammer pounding nails it all together and drives it along like the rhythm of a factory.

ECC struggle against the 229’s PA’s limitations and at times you can’t pick up Josh’s vocals but despite the frustration you have to admire their game spirit.

Musically, they have classical influences – classical as in The Who – but sit sound-wise reasonably close to the likes of Kings of Leon. There is an element of Swampy sub-Delta Blues which Josh accentuates with the use of some bottleneck guitar work. It has that mythic American landscape feel to it, as if it would have been on Jack Kerouac’s ipod if such a thing existed when he was booting back and forth across the country on the back of a station wagon.

Back home, they have just come off the back of a Black Francis support tour, over here they’ve got a whole new audience to win over and their energetic set gets many an appreciative nod and toe tap. With a Jon Kennedy interview over at XFM to rush to after the set, the UK charm offensive has started and with a fair wind blowing, ECC will be earning a bit more than nods and toe taps over the next few months.