Do not be alarmed! Do not adjust your set! Chartburn hasn’t gone away — it’s just sharing space with some more Friday features, including the the New Radio Roundtable, in which your intrepid Chartburn panel discusses some of the songs going for adds at various formats. And away we go!

Adult Contemporary: Airborne Toxic Event, “Sometime Around Midnight”

Zack Dennis: This song takes itself way too seriously. The band has some terrific buzz, and aside from an excess of gloss, they seem to be pushing the right buttons on the alternative pop machine. But after listening to it a couple of times the excess of emotion starts to wear thin for me.

Beau Dure: In the beginning, I figured this was a bad Explosions in the Sky impression. By the end, I thought it was a pretty good Joy Division impression. I’d tone down the chiming guitar at the beginning, but beyond that, it’s an impressive track. The jealousy builds over the course of the song and boils over at the end, and the singer handles the material far better than most of the fifth-rate Eddie Vedder clones in rock these days.

Dw. Dunphy: I wouldn’t turn this off if I heard it on the radio. It’s equal parts Explosions In The Sky and Arcade Fire, but I kept waiting for the sky to open up on this and only got shouting. Still, with a name like Airborne Toxic Event, I was expecting something much…crappier. We’ll call this a pleasant surprise, if nothing more.

David Medsker: You could usually tell the crappy bands from the good ones by their names alone, but the line is getting blurrier by the day. I wrote off ATE by their name too, and then I heard the album and thought, “Shit, these guys are good.” What am I going to use as a benchmark now? Does this mean I actually have to listen to everyone first before making a judgment on their talent? Fuck.

Jeff Giles: Californian singers who try to sound like they’re British always piss me off; in fact, I still haven’t forgiven Billie Joe of Green Day. But I’ve always been a sucker for rock ‘n’ roll that at least makes the effort to try and sound majestic, and this track gets pretty huge (definitely in an Explosions in the Sky-type way — good call, Beau). Also, Pitchfork gave their album 1.6 out of 10, so I’m inclined to give the band the benefit of the doubt.

Zack: I take umbrage to this song being compared to anything Explosions in the Sky. Their songs go through a variety of changes (tempo, volume, chord structure, atmosphere) while all the Airborne Toxic Event song does is build some tension and get a bit louder. (more…)