Ears Wide Open: Velour Afternoon

Kevin Bronson on February 2nd, 2018

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Even though they’ve been around less than two years, Velour Afternoon have already released an album and an EP, each of which paints their stoned/not stoned experiences with a retro-psychedelic brush and narrates them with deadly nonchalance. The Velvet Underground is the touchstone here, and the L.A. quartet — Brian Bartus, Bailey Lawless, Evan Tetreault and Leon Manson — avoid the perils of so many acolytes who settle for Xeroxing the vibe. Their EP “1001 Dreams and No Sleep,” released in January, is an homage to an Alan Watts essay from the book “The Spirit of Zen.” To cop the quartet’s astute explanation: “[It] projects a sort of blurred gaze at the current cultural and economic status of L.A.,” they write. “Meandering through a city with enormous poverty leaking onto brand new housing developments, to beaches, canyons, traffic and all the dumb shit you have to listen to people say along the way …” Which we’ve been waiting for someone to capture musically without 1) sounding bitter and whiny, or 2) sounding like a trip to the Ice Cream Museum.

It was a year ago that Velour Afternoon released their debut, “Mexican Pain Pill,” 12 songs of salve culled from the band’s adventures in the deserts of Marfa, Texas, Joshua Tree and Baja Mexico. It’s worth a trip too.

||| Stream: “1001 Dreams and No Sleep”