The audacious debut from these pedigreed Chicago players, CB Radio Gorgeous has been shaking asses for a couple of months and now you can bring the experience home. High-treble, groovin' rhythm, genius vocals recall Australia's X or even the Delta 5, but CBRG truly only plays CBRG. Members of Big Zit, Coughs, CCTV, and Negative Scanner. 

Our take: Demo cassette from yet another great punk band out of the Chicago area on Not Normal Tapes. Like a lot of those bands, CB Radio Gorgeous features members of other bands you know, but they don’t feel like a continuation or an extension of a previous project, but rather their own thing. They bear similarities to Big Zit’s Bad Brains-isms, mostly because they play so damn fast and their songs are so great. The production reminds me of the Bad Brains’ Black Dots material and the songs have smart arrangements that make room for all the band’s excellent players to bounce off one another. You’ll often hear a melodic bass line cruising past a guitar riff in a different direction or a drum fill finding its perfect home in the space left open in a riff. Whether CB Radio Gorgeous are in full-on, blistering Bad Brains mode or they’re doing one of their more mid-paced, Dangerhouse-y tracks they keep every second of this tape lively and interesting. I’ve heard a lot of interesting things out of Chicago over the past few years, but this is among the best.