The Black Angels
Phosphene Dream

THE REVIEW

The Texans The Black Angels from Austin return with their third studio album: "Phosphene Dream". They return as dark and livid as your worst lysergic trip, acidic and tormented as the black soul of the farthest hippie dream you can recall. Dazzled by a visceral brightness, this third effort is nothing but a sixties obsession with a light mood, less oppressive compared to their previous works ("Passover" and "Directions To See A Ghost") and appears as a sudden and fleeting perception of that crazy trail of phosphenes that adorned an era: the sixties.

It is not the originality of the sound that is the trademark of our black angels, that's clear, but those fierce vintage guitars, that organ buried deep in every track, those maniacal Barrett-esque visions combined with a minimalistic drum and an exhilarating and wicked garage-groove create an album as dangerous for the mind as it is for the ears. A kind of liquid psych-drone mantra that you cannot escape. Like a gelatinous glue, it numbs your senses, guiding you through the desolate streets of a nation inhabited only by nightmares and shadows.

"Bad Vibrations", the open-track, is the obvious example. A grim lament and a sinister guitar riff navigate you toward the bad omen that, in the end, love will eat your heart, and it is clear that this is the 'best' way to start this journey of unhealthy obsessions. It ranges from the psych-rock 'presences' of "Haunting at 1300 McKinley" to the golden light of the 'aliens' in ''Yellow Elevator 2" (superb!) finally landing on the bloodstained shores of our consciousness in ''River Of Blood'', pounded by distorted feedback and a polluted and deviant drone-machine. From the extraterrestrial Floydian expedition of "Entrance Song" to the plaintive Velvet-esque chants of "True Believers", passing through the bright crystalline visions of "Sunday Afternoon" with its lush vintage organs and ending this crazy temporal catharsis amid the sweaty handclaps and exciting guitars of the danceable "Telephone" (magnificent!).

"Phosphene Dream" is a tormented and lysergic high, a psych'n'roll through desert hallucinations that traverse the well-trodden ground halfway between the psychedelia of compatriots 13th Floor Elevators and the paranoid and decadent style of Velvet Underground. It is a wandering between folk-rock reverbs ("True Believers"), electric ballads ("The Snipers" and "Phospene Dream") and feverish boogies ("Telephone" and "Sunday Afternoon"). "Phosphene Dream" is the sound of rebellion, of internal ferment, the cure for the unrest in your veins.... There is no calm this time on your path, only an immense vastness of spaces. Dennis Hopper would have jumped in the saddle, with money in the motorcycle tank, a slave to the system but a child of freedom; maybe this time I'll do it too. In the meantime, you get this record, do it for your own good.