Your 33 Black Angels
Recently one of our readers sent me an email about a band they really like called Your 33 Black Angels. Apparently they first heard about Y33BA by a friend and thought they were awesome. So, I headed to Y33BA’s myspace page to take a listen and they really are great!
Your 33 Black Angels is made up of Benji Kast, Tim Mumford, John O’Callaghan, Stevie Stapleton, and Josh Westfal. In their words:
“Y33BA was born in Brooklyn, but dreamed in a West Harlem flophouse. There was a bottle of Wild Turkey, grown men in boxers, and far too much bachata music going around. We were not fond of ‘shoegazer’ sensibilities or requisite visits to tatoo parlors; we wanted to sing about the basics: cold merciless women, irresponsible philosophy and violence.”
Y33BA has remain pretty underground, though they independently released a cd called Lonely Street, earlier this year. Luckily for them the LP fell into the hands of the Senior Editor of Rolling Stone, David Fricke, and he gave them a glowing review saying Lonely Street was “one of this year’s treasures.” To me their sound is often reminiscent of the days when blues and rock were one, but I do agree with Fricke when he says, “The LP is worth the hunt for its pop-wise rattle (Pavement with a case of the Strokes) and singer Josh Westfal’s resemblance, in dry, frank voice and cautious optimism, to another local institution: Lou Reed on the Velvet Underground’s fourth album, Loaded.”
You can score Lonely Street on the bands myspace page (make sure to listen to “Sue,” its my favorite song), but you can hear their song “Psycho on You Side” right here!
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