sound of the suburbs

A recent discovery of mine, The Black Angels hail from the lone star state though their music has nothing to do at all with traditional cowboy ware. As the name might well suggest there is more than a little bit of the Velvet Underground here. The band mixes elements as diverse as Stereolab, Space Man 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, Thee Hypnotics, Julian Cope, Led Zeppelin, the Pixies and of course the Velvets together to good effect, the result is a dream like rhythmic drone heavily reminiscent of 60' psychedelia. Over this drone we find the Texan drawl of vocalist Alex Maas that conjures up images of Jim Morrison. Lyrically they are about as un Texan as you can get, showing no pity for local boy George Bush in their scathing critic of the situation in Iraq 'The First Vietnamese War' which can be found on their debut album 'Passover'.
The band recently played at Washington DCs 9:30 club and this date was broadcasted by NPR from which you can sample them live on 'Black Grease' and 'Better Off Alone' the whole show is also available to download here as one big 40 mo file.