SURFERS UP

Talk about anti-commercial--the band’s very name (which we abbreviated to B.H. Surfers) guarantees it’ll never get screened on MTV or charted in any overground publication. Not that the Austin quintet’s music would appeal anywhere beyond left field anyway. The surprising thing about the Surfers’ first set at the Roxy Saturday was that for all the harshness and dissonance and quirkiness, they conveyed a genuine, if peculiar, charm.

They also conveyed a certain creepiness, looking like a tribe of backwoods hippies who’ve been keeping their strobe lights flickering through the dark days since the end of the psychedelic era. But baby-faced singer Gibby Haynes delivered his surreal narratives with an engaging eagerness to communicate something, sometimes belting it out through a bullhorn, sometimes nearly swallowing the mike. Like Captain Beefheart, the Meat Puppets and other voyagers on the fringe, the Surfers are so into their vision that it’s hard not to go along with them.