Arizona BOTM: Yuma Territorial Prison Guards

Our last review might have raised some concerns. Would Arizona’s underground MySpace music have anything to offer? Would it all be instrumental, 90’s-era gangster rap?

Fear not, my friends. For the latest installment of Arizona Band Of The Moment, we bring you Yuma Territorial Prison Guards.

Borrowing the name from a local historical landmark, this little gem of a band packs some fuzzed-out ferocity: a heavy thump and jangle of guitar turned up to 11 and distorted the hell out. You won’t find innovation or mood shifts from track to track, but this is solid rock ’n’ roll — a thick goulash of punk, rock and a country aesthetic befitting their hard-scrabble hometown.

This is probably how the rest of the country imagines Yuma to be, a place scratched in stone or dynamited out of the Arizona/Mexico/California border. Yuma is a prison town, and this is prison music, barked out by a guy who sounds like a whiskey-gargling jailer.

I’ll stop with the hackneyed descriptors and let the band describe themselves:

“Sounds Like: The snap of a mans neck bein hanged (sic).”

That’s about right.

And while the truth is that Yuma, even as a bordertown, is probably a bit cleaner than its early days, the Yuma Territorial Prison Guards are more drawn to the mythology.

It’s that ethos, eschewing reality in favor of the far more interesting grit, that draws people to bands like Drive-By Truckers and Whiskeytown. Mentions of Wal-Mart and Tastee Freez in contemporary country music might be accurate, but those of us outside the South want to believe there are still moonshiners running the Alabama/Tennessee state line. It’s what makes hip-hop so popular with white suburbanites.

Reality is nice and all, but sometimes you want to listen to a distorted guitar. Sometimes you want to picture yourself in a dust-swept town downing a shot of distilled rye, even if wrapped in swirling air conditioning, clicking away at a keyboard.

Yuma Territorial Prison Guards isn’t for everyone, and it’s certainly not a band I’d listen to frequently. But the jarring D-I-Y rock from their 2006 release, “Somerton Blues,” plays well even a few times around. The sound is reminiscent of San Francisco’s Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but with less sheen. While the lyrics are difficult to make out, the feel of a legendary frontier town brings a level of earnestness to the music.

Punk without a sneer isn’t so bad, you know?

Fortunately, denizens of Arizona’s larger cities have a chance to see YTPG live. According to the band’s MySpace site, it may split its time between Yuma and Tempe.The band will be playing a show at the Grumpus Room in Tucson on Friday, Aug. 8.

If the show is half as energetic as the music, attendees are in for a treat.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.