With members on board from Backwoods Payback and Electric Horsemen, you probably already know Black Cowgirl is going to be some hard-hitting stuff. But the four-piece take a surprising tone, injecting a kind of psych-garage rock vibe into their songs, like early Nebula driving while later Nebula rides shotgun. Not that they sound like Nebula or anything.

All kidding aside, Black Cowgirl (what is it with these Pennsylvania bands and their awesome names?) throw a little Americana into the mix as well — a bit of Neil Young pops up during the quiet part of “Dirt,” despite the rest of the track’s boogie shuffle — but basically, this is the kind of rock that those who have been around the scene for a while will have no problem recognizing or welcoming into their ears.

The production of the tracks on their MySpace is a little rough, but how much of that is crappy MySpace compression and how much is the band’s actual sound, I couldn’t say. Nonetheless, I think the fuzzy garage stomp of “The Prowler” has no problem getting its point across. Oddly enough, my favorite of the three Black Cowgirl tracks online is the one without a name, unless it’s actually called “…” or “[Elipsis],” which has a more laid-back style and spacier groove. I received a disc compiling several songs together, but no tracklist, so specifics are hard to get to at this point.

I have no fodder to set the rumor mill in motion as regards future recordings, so I’ll just say keep an eye out for Black Cowgirl updates and if you get a second, click on their MySpace to check them out. If you’re looking for some classic-style rock that won’t make you feel like you need to write a dissertation about it, you could do a hell of a lot worse.

Tags: Black Cowgirl, Pennsylvania, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 2:01 pm and is filed under On the Radar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.