Austin psych leaders’ sixth album is a whopper of a double, their most accomplished yet.
A decade ago I was getting into new bands at the time, The Janitors from Sweden and Dead Skeletons from Iceland. But while Europe seemed to be the most happening area of the world for psychedelic rock, their key influence was an American band, Austin’s The Black Angels. Formed in 2004, the band has been a driving force in the 21st century psychedelic scene, kicking off the first Austin Psych in 2008, which evolved into Levitation and expanded to Chicago, Vancouver and France. It served as a vivid reminder to pay attention to what’s happening in our own back yard. True to their name, taken from The Velvet Underground’s “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” they’ve taken the same dark, brooding elements that The Dream Syndicate initially did in 1982, but focused entirely on droning distortion, with touches of 13th Floor Elevators and Pink Floyd, but adding more recent influences of The Jesus and the Mary Chain’s buzzsaw noise, Loop, The Spacemen 3, and Spiritualized. Their five albums and several EPs all varied slightly, and were consistently excellent, but also were fairly insular, not fully tempting non-heads to investigate their sonic world.
That might change with their sixth album, their first double. For CD/digital standards, it’s not all that long, at just under 58 minutes, but enough for a double LP that’s selling for $35, and will no doubt sell out quickly to their loyal fanbase. And while it’s fairly dark and heavy, there’s a high proportion of stand-out songs that could expand their audience. In the weeks leading up to this release I revisited their catalog. For many years my default favorite was their debut Passover (2006), but Directions To See a Ghost (2008) has overtaken it, and Phosphene Dream (2010) came closer. I decided I’d originally underrated Indigo Meadow (2013), and over the course of the albums, Christian Bland’s vocal leads have gradually been exhumed from underneath the layers of feedback and brought up front. While no means a powerhouse, his vocals have gotten better and more expressive by Death Song (2017). And while there are no obviously drastic changes, he sounds better than ever on the new album, 18 years into their career. On songs like the lead single, “El Jardin,” he invokes Ian McCulloch’s tremelo that served the first four Echo & the Bunnymen albums so well.
The droning feedback can still be found, and effective as ever on the foreboding “Empires Falling,” but with an increasingly impressive creativity in it’s judicious use in the arrangements. The woozy application of reverb on both percussion and vocals on “Without a Trace” brings to mind an unclean union between “When the Levee Breaks” and Massive Attack. In their most directly political lyrics yet, “La Pared (Govt. Wall Blues),” sounds appropriately loud and menacing, and the vocals right up there in the mix to express disgust and outrage. The instrumentation and noise is stripped down to showcase the more delicate “100 Flowers of Paracusia,” another standout on an album stuffed with them.
There’s really no filler among these 15 tracks. With so much diversity in sounds and arrangements, the familiar dirge of “The River” is entirely welcome, as is the cyclical garage noir riffs of the title track. “Vermillion Eyes” one of the most hauntingly melodic psych noir entries in their catalog.
Coming out with their best album at this point as an impressive achievement. The release of A Wilderness of Mirrors is perfectly timed to be celebrated with what will undoubtedly be a triumphant headline performance at their Levitation fest on October 30. Tickets for the overall fest have already sold out, but individual shows like The Black Angels are still available. Now that Rancho Bulboso is located just outside Austin, I’ll be there!
This is the last time I saw The Black Angels, in Chicago, which provided the priceless opportunity to see Roky Erickson one last time before he left us in 2019.
The Black Angels are now honored members of the Six Album Run Club. Six consecutive albums with no duds is an accomplishment that’s pretty hard to achieve. Depending on where the new album ends up on my list by the end of the year, they will be duking it out with Spoon for the fifth spot for 21st Century runs behind Colour Haze, Motorpsycho, Radiohead and Ufomammut. Elder and Graveyard may also compete for those spots once their sixth albums come out.
