Tag: The Black Angels

Top 20 albums of 2022: #’s 5 – 1

Here we are at the top five albums I reviewed in 2022. It was a great year for music, and these are what stood out for me among all the good stuff out there.

#5: Jacques Greene – Fantasy

As I’ve mentioned before, 2022 was a great year for electronic music, and this EP from Jacques Greene topped my list of that kind of music. It mixes house, drum and bass, ambient, and a bit of synth wave into a luscious brew.

#4: The Staples Jr. Singers – When Do We Get Paid

This reissue of classic gospel funk tracks by The Staples Jr. Singers is stunning. The amount of groove and friskiness in these songs is almost overwhelming. The instrumentation and harmonizing are outstanding, and there’s enough soul for two churches.

#3: Yard Act – The Overload

This is the best post-punk album I heard all year. Everything on it is razor sharp: the wit, the guitar angles, the grooves, the drum sounds, and the slightly snarled tongue-in-cheek vocals.

#2: The Black Angels – Wilderness of Mirrors

The Black Angels‘ new album was a great return for them. It explores the stress of modern times through walls of distorted guitars, reverb-laden vocals, powerful drums, and mind-warping sound. The Black Angels have yet to put out a bad record, but this one somehow set the bar even higher for psych-bands to follow.

#1: A Place to Bury Strangers – See Through You

A Place to Bury Strangers came back with a new lineup and some of Oliver Ackermann‘s most revealing lyrics about the end of friendships, loneliness, grief, over-reliance on technology, and the overall anxiety everyone’s been feeling since 2019. Ackermann put it all out there and walloped us with more honesty and distortion that you can almost stand.

Let’s look forward to a great 2023!

Keep your mind open.

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Review: The Black Angels – Wilderness of Mirrors

The Black Angels don’t get enough credit for the design of their album covers. The artwork is always mind-bending on them. Take, for instance, the cover of their newest record, Wilderness of Mirrors. It looks like a bunch of repeating right angles in various patterns, like a gigantic maze you can neither enter or exit. You feel like something is there, however. Then, you look at it just right, or look at it while you move it one way or another, and the message in the art reveals itself.

It’s the same with their music. Their songs are often multi-layered or have things you seem to hear only when in certain states of mind, in certain environments, or during certain types of weather.

“With a Trace” starts sounding muted and then bursts forth with hypnotizing fuzz. “History of the Future” has both a wonderful title (a meditation on how something will be perceived before it even exists) and some of the heaviest guitar riffs and drums on the record. It’s difficult at times to determine if Stephanie Bailey‘s beats or Christian Bland‘s guitars are dominating the song because they swing back and forth like Godzilla fighting King Kong.

“We can watch it all go to hell,” Alex Maas sings on “Empires Falling” – a song about the rage and cries for justice (“Our country’s bleeding from street to bloody street.”). It swirls and roars, serving as both a call to action and a warning. “El Jardín” is a psych-rock love song, the kind that The Black Angels do so well – a tale of love, mystery, probably death, and acceptance of whatever outcome the universe has planned.

On “La Pared (Govt. Wall Blues),” they sing about the impermanence of things that seem indestructible at first, and the rage they felt at a border wall being built in their home state of Texas (“You can build this wall of hate, but we’ll never separate.”). “Firefly” includes sexy French vocals in another song about lost love. “Make It Known” and “The River” are cool psych-drifts, the latter of which names Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, and other psychedelic legends.

The title track has a dangerous swagger to it and sounds like it belongs in an A24 Studios horror film. “I’ve been trying to warn you, here and now, and always,” Maas sings on “Here & Now” – a dire warning about what we’re doing to Mother Earth. “100 Flowers of Paracusia” has an ethereal feel to it that floats back down to Earth with Morricone-like guitar chords.

“A Walk on the Outside” is a lyrical riff on Lou Reed‘s “Walk on the Wild Side,” and the heavy bass and wild synths spin around you like a kitten chasing a shoestring held by a little kid. “Vermillion Eyes” lifts you off the ground and lets you float there without worry. The soaring guitars on “Icon” then send you into outer space as Maas mentions Nico and The Velvet Underground (from whom the band get their name, in case you weren’t aware) and you’re soon lost in a neat state of being that’s difficult to describe. The album ends with “Suffocation,” an interesting name for a final track on an album about facing what’s within us (whether we want to or not) and breaking free of illusion. The track isn’t suffocating at all. It’s uplifting by the end. The Black Angels leave us with hope that we can remove our metaphorical masks and walk out of the wilderness we’ve created into something real and meaningful.

It’s their best album in a while – and that’s saying something since they’ve yet to release a bad record.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin 2022 recap: Day Four

The last night of Levitation 2022 took us back to Stubb’s for more psychedelic freak-outs. It was the night before Halloween, so plenty of people were still in costume – including some rather elaborate ones such as an astronaut and multiple witches decked out in exotic costumes and makeup.

Those witches probably appreciated the wild set by Frankie and the Witch Fingers, who only get better every time I see them live. They had painted their faces like ghouls for the occasion and ripped through a lot of roaring fuzz.

Frankie and the Witch Fingers

Up next, and all the way from France, were La Femme. They played a fiery set of electro-psych mixed with a lot of sex appeal and vocals in French. The crowd wasn’t sure what to make of them at first, but they gained many fans by the end of their set.

La Femme

Closing out the Stubb’s show were The Black Angels – hometown heroes and curators of the festival. They never disappoint, and they played some extended versions of classic tracks and heavy stuff from their newest album, Wilderness of Mirrors.

The Black Angels

The end of their set wasn’t the end of the festival, however. We made the ten-minute drive to Feels So Good Records to catch Moon Duo perform a set in their “lightship” – a cube of screens that had projections coming through the back of it toward the crowd instead of the other way around with the images going onto the stage and band. Moon Duo would sometimes melt into the images. It was a hypnotizing effect and a beautiful blend of light and sound.

Moon Duo in the Lighsthip

After their set ended, a guy near us said, “Levitation’s over.” with a bit of sadness in his voice. It was for him and for us. It had been a fun weekend, as always, with good vibes all around and a lot of excellent music. It remains one of the best festivals for music lovers.

See you next year.

Keep your mind open.

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The Black Angels announce western U.S. west tour for this June with Dion Lunadon and Primus.

The Black Angels have announced a cool tour through the western United States starting June 02nd in Denver and wrapping up twenty-three days later in Las Vegas. Bass fuzz maestro Dion Lunadon is opening for them, and eight of those shows (including the finale in Las Vegas) has The Black Angels and Mr. Lunadon opening for Primus, no less. Tickets are already on sale for these dates, so don’t miss out on them.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to The Black Angels.]

Levitation Austin artist spotlight: The Black Angels

Austin’s own Black Angels not only play Levitation Austin again this year, they also help curate the festival every year.  The psych-rock heavyweights will close Stubb’s BBQ on April 29th.  I will see them at any opportunity, and it’s rare I get to see them in front of a hometown crowd.  Their set will be one of my favorite moments of the festival, I’m sure.

Keep your mind open.

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Elephant Stone announces Europe and North America tour dates.

Elephant Stone have been on tour for seemingly all of 2017, and now they’ve added more tour dates throughout Europe and North America that go into the winter.  They’re playing gigs with the likes of the Black Angels, A Place to Bury Strangers, and the Dream Syndicate.  Any of these shows would be well worth your time and money.  Here are the dates:

8/11 Quebec City, QC @ Le Cercle TICKETS | FB EVENT

8/12 Gaspe, QC @ Festival du Musique au Bout du Monde TICKETS | FB EVENT
8/13 Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, QC @ Sea Shack TICKETS | FB EVENT
9/1 Rouyn Noranda, QC @ Petit Theatre de Rouyn Noranda TICKETS | FB EVENT ^
9/7 Berlin, DE @ Bassy TICKETS | FB EVENT *
9/8 Cologne, DE @ Gebäude 9 TICKETS | FB EVENT *
9/9 Hamburg, DE @ Molotow TICKETS | FB EVENT *
9/12 Malmo, SWE @ Plan B FB EVENT
9/13 Copenhagen, DK @ Pumpehuset TICKETS | FB EVENT #
9/16 Angers, FR @ Theatre le Quai TICKETS | FB EVENT ~
9/18 Le Havre, FR @ McDaid’s Live FB EVENT
9/19 Leiden, NL @ Gebroeders Nobel TICKETS
9/20 Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso TICKETS | FB EVENT @
9/22 London, UK @ O2 Forum TICKETS | FB EVENT #
9/23 Liverpool, UK @ Baltic Triangle TICKETS | FB EVENT &
9/27 Theossaliniki, GR @ Rover Bar 
9/28 Arta, GR @ Miles Bar 
9/29 Athens, GR @ Death Disco FB EVENT
12/3 Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups TICKETS  +
12/4 Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall TICKETS  +
12/5 Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line TICKETS  +
12/6 St Louis, MO @ Off Broadway TICKETS +
12/7 Nashville, TN @ High Watt TICKETS +
12/8 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl TICKETS  +
12/9 Raleigh, NC @ Stag’s Head Music Hall TICKETS +
12/10 Richmond VA @ Capital Ale House TICKETS  +
^ w/ A Place to Bury Strangers
# w/ The Black Angels and A Place to Bury Strangers
@ Indiestadt Festival w/ The Black Angels,A Place to Bury Strangers, Beach Fossils
& Liverpool Psych Fest with sets by Elephant Stone and Acid House Ragas
+ w/ The Dream Syndicate

Rewind Review: The Black Angels – Clear Lake Forest (2014)

The Black Angels‘ 2014 EP, Clear Lake Forest, is a fine dose of psychedelia and was a great way to get your summer freak on when it was released that year (and still is).

“Sunday Evening” hits you right away with reverb and the lyric “What if I told you that everything you know isn’t even really true?” Christian Bland’s guitar work on it ranges from skronky to trippy, and the song has probably the hottest tambourine work you’ve heard in a long while.

“Tired Eyes” opens with Stephanie Bailey’s always-dependable thunderous drumming and soon spins into a wild track with lead singer Alex Maas and Christian Bland sharing the vocals about someone who seems tired of living in illusion. I may be wrong. The song is so groovy that it seems to pour incense smoke from your speakers, so I may be hallucinating any meaning I’ve assigned to it.

“Diamond Eyes” is downright lovely. Maas’ reverberated vocals, Bland’s spaghetti western guitar, Jake Garcia’s soothing rhythm guitar, Kyle Hunt’s soaring synths, and Bailey’s military-precision beats all gel to become one of the Black Angels’ best tracks.

“The Flop” was the first single off Clear Lake Forest, and it’s easy to understand why. Hunt’s keyboards sound like he’s streaming them from the Doors’ “Soul Kitchen” outtakes. Bailey’s drums hit so hard they may take your lunch money. The bridge plunges you straight down the rabbit hole and doesn’t let you out. “An Occurrence at 4507 South Third Street” is the Black Angels’ second “address” song (the first being “Haunting at 1300 McKinley” from Phosphene Dream). It has a bit of a honky-tonk feel to it (thanks to the snappy beat) and I can’t help but wonder if it’s about another haunting or a murder or suicide that led to the haunting. “The Executioner” is certainly about death (a common theme on Black Angels records). Maas’ lyrics are the clearest on this track (before the freak-out of a bridge, at least). It’s an interesting twist. Maas wants you to know that sin may feel good, but death waits so you’d better get things straight before you meet it.

The closer, “Linda’s Gone,” follows the life of a woman who wants and seeks something beyond her boring life and even the boredom of the illusion around her (and all of us, really). It has all the stuff you like from the Black Angels: tribal drumming, metaphysical lyrics, trance-inducing synths, spacey vocals, and guitar licks that seem to fold in on themselves and then back out into different shapes.

Clear Lake Forest was a solid EP and a great follow-up to their full-length album, Indigo Meadow. Treat yourself to it.

Keep your mind open.

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Live – The Black Angels and A Place to Bury Strangers – Chicago, IL – May 11, 2017

I will see The Black Angels or A Place to Bury Strangers at any opportunity, so having them both on the same bill is a win-win and a must-see for me.  Seeing them in Chicago’s Thalia Hall was an added bonus because the acoustics there are outstanding and there isn’t a bad place to stand or sit in the joint.

A Place to Bury Strangers were prompt, starting the show at 9:00pm sharp (which seems to be a trend in Chicago venues as of late).  They came out as they always do – loud and heavy.  They opened with “We’ve Come So Far” from Transfixiation and it was off to the races.  The addition of Lia Braswell on drums is a great one, as she practically beat her kit into the floor.  Her backing vocals bring a new dimension to many APTBS tracks, and I hope this trend continues on some new material.  Guitarist and lead singer Oliver Ackermann was on fire for their whole set.

Every APTBS show looks like a scene from a John Carpenter film.

They ended their set with a wild sequencer / synth / bass / light show that I’d seen them do before in Detroit.  They moved into the crowd and were soon casting laser lights and weird, warping synths beats and Dion Lunadon’s growling bass licks throughout the whole hall.

APTBS blowing minds and retinas in Thalia Hall.

As if that weren’t trippy enough, the Black Angels started their set with this image.

Do I detect a nod to Devo here?

“Take your acid now,” said a friend of mine upon seeing this.  The Black Angels opened up with “Currency,” the first single off their new album – Death Song (review coming soon).  “Bad Vibrations” (always a favorite) followed, and it again wowed the crowd.

The Black Angels dropping “Currency” from their new album.

This was the sixth time I’ve seen the Black Angels (and the third I’ve seen APTBS), and this might’ve been the heaviest set I’ve seen by them.  My wife (who’s seen them five of the six times with me) noticed this, too.  The version of “You On the Run” they played was certainly the heaviest I’d heard.  It bordered on stoner metal.  Christian Bland’s guitar seemed cranked to 11 in terms of volume and distortion for the entire show.  Stephanie Bailey further cemented her prowess as one of the best rock drummers of our time.  I say this every time I see the Black Angels live: Stephanie Bailey is their secret weapon.  I later realized this was the first show I’d seen in a while in which both bands had powerful drummers.

The Black Angels getting heavy.

They played many tracks from the new record.  “Half Believing,” “Comanche Moon,” “I Dreamt,” “Medicine,” “Grab As Much As You Can,” and “Death March” all sounded great.  They closed with “Young Men Dead,” which made one man behind me so happy that he rushed ahead of me to head-bang and share his one-hitter with the strangers to his left and right.

The Black Angels performing “Young Men Dead” during their encore.

This made six good shows in a row from the Black Angels and three straight for APTBS in my experience.  This tour is selling out across the country, so you’d better get your tickets soon if you want to catch it.  I also must give a salute to the two men who make up the Mustachio Light Show.  They provided all the wild and stunning visuals during the Black Angels’ set.  It’s a great addition to this tour.

Thanks to Oliver Ackermann, Steven Matrick, and Burgers Rana for getting me a press pass to this show.  I’ll have an interview with Oliver Ackermann posted soon as well.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation France announces dates and first lineup.

While Levitation Austin didn’t happen this year, Levitation France is a go on September 15-16th!  This bodes well for the Levitation shows (a small one is being held in Austin the first weekend of May) making a full return next year.

The first wave of band announcements includes the Black Angels, Slowdive, Acid Mothers Temple, and Kikagu Moyo.  As usual, the Levitation festivals always have a great lineup, and this will be no exception.  Get to Angers, France if you can.

Keep your mind open.

 

The Black Angels’ new album, Death Song, due April 21, 2017.

Austin, Texas’ psych-rock wizards The Black Angels are dropping their newest album, Death Song, on April 21st and have announced a spring tour starting in Nashville and ending in Austin.  The first single off the new album, “Currency,” is already out and a great listen.

You can find all the tour dates, album pre-sale bundles that include things like T-shirts and posters, and the lyric video for “Currency” here.

Oh yeah, they’re also touring with A Place to Bury Strangers, so don’t miss this tour.

Keep your mind open.