The Black Angels and Dead Meadow @ Union Transfer.

Text and images by Chad Sims.

For fans of psychedelic rock, Austin’s The Black Angels (above and right) played Union Transfer Thursday night. Performing songs from all three of their albums, including tracks from their most recent LP Phosphene Dream (2010), the Angels brought their brand of throwback psychedelic rock. The audience loved the set, which sounded like an updated mixture of The Yardbirds and The Velvet Underground.  Vocalist Alex Maas deserves a special shout out for his amazing performance.

Spindrift opened the show with a great performance combining elements of psyche rock, spaghetti western soundtracks and sci-fi cheese, a la Man or Astroman?.  Although this may sound like an odd combination it worked in a truly inventive way.

Dead Meadow (below) played their darker, more sprawling version of psyche rock, drawing from all six of their full-length albums.  Anyone interested in heavier psychedelic rock in the vein of Black Sabbath needs to catch Dead Meadow the next time they roll through town.