Boston Phoenix Hands us Oregon & Illinois

For the second year in a row, to celebrate July 4th, the Boston Phoenix has chosen their Best New Bands from each of the 50 States - and Sargent House bands take 2 of the 50 States! So let's hear it for Maps & Atlases taking Illinois and Red Fang taking Oregon !

Red Fang was chosen as best new band for Oregon

WHY THEM? Twenty years after thrash killed hair metal and 10 after stoner removed virtuosity from the mix, it’s heartening to see a band like Red Fang, which combines the fun, the chops, and the bulbous weight of all three. Looking like dorks but rocking with an admirably calculated abandon, they casually toss flaming firebird arpeggios and Mastodon-y turnarounds into an otherwise Fu Manchu–y boogie van. Bryan Giles’s Ozzy-like wail floats over the pro-ceedings when not stinging like a bee. Red Fang bring a beer-can-to-the-forehead glee and irreverence that is much needed in today’s metal vortex.

Maps & Atlases was chosen as best new band for Illinois

WHY THEM? Everybody has that one super-anal friend who keeps his apartment impossibly neat, arranges his furnishings according to some invisible geometry, folds each towel, and tucks every sheet with an aggres-sive sense of crispness. Now that guy has a new favorite band. If your hatred for Vampire Weekend has nothing to do with how they satisfied their multi-cultural credit hours, but rather how infuriatingly organized they are, run far from this blurb. If, on the other hand, you like your pop agile, fragile, nimble, wry, and, well, kind of WASP-y (that is, if when you think Chicago, you think of the lush ditties of the Sea and Cake, or the warm math of Sweater Weather or early Joan of Arc), their You, Me and the Mountain EP might make the perfect new housemate.