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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best psych album of the decade, 2 Mar 2008
Ignore the previous review. This is infinitely better than the commercialised music Flaming Lips have been making for the past decade. And this album is not a very difficult listen at all, if you're openminded about what you're going to hear and go along with it. Fans of dark psychedelia will get off on this album for sure. And it's not true that ideas are thrown about without thought or focus. This is so much more enjoyable than the kind of kitchen sink mess that the likes of Architecture In Helsinki come up with. And the vocals are very pleasing to these ears - there's a high feminine quality to them which soars over the mostly dark musical concoctions. Listening to this album, there is a wonderful sense of freedom, which was there in the music of the late sixties. A sense that anything can happen, and probably will. But it's wrong to label this work retro - it has a fresh original quality to it. It reminds me in its atmosphere of the kind of indie rock that was coming out of the States in the mid to late eighties - a kind of seminal uncommercial vibe. Seriously this is probably the coolest album of the decade so far (cool in all the right ways too). You'll probably never hear any of this album on an advert (unlike Flaming Lips) . . . they'll never be horribly overexposed or become TV personalities . . . they'll always be cool and obscure. What more do you want from a band, huh?
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6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Sermon falls on deaf ears., 29 Feb 2008
"Strange things keep happening " trills Josh Jones in his nails down a blackboard falsetto on "Bellawood". He's not wrong as strange things do indeed keep happening on The Evening Descends ,Evangelicals second album. Unfortunately much of the strangeness on this album comes across as the affected thought out variety rather than the organic spontaneous variety that their closet peers The Flaming Lips( Who they share a zip code with apparently) excel at.
Making genuinely innovative , experimental music that still has some of the things most of us like about music in the first place- emotional clout, sonic dexterity , empathy , good tunes- is remarkably difficult .I have listened to countless albums by artists trying to push that poxy envelope only to end up with a scrunched up ball of paper and sad to report that The Evening Descends is another one.
The music is complex but never in a cohesive or structured way. Ideas are thrown around like confetti at a wedding on a windy day and like confetti on a windy day most of them end up swirling away on a whim leaving no impression. Song have fragmentary moments where I thought something interesting might develop but everything is cursory and impulsive . Guitars lines twitter , keyboards melodies frustratingly terminate just when something exciting might develop. There are moments of gestating choral majesty that disappear like a switch has been flipped though what tended to flip most was me , in annoyance, as another encouraging moment swerved down another musical cul de sac.
Jones voice isn't the easiest to get along with either but that's not a massive problem if the songs are good enough but there is not one song on this album that for the whole of it's duration captivates. I don't doubt that some will love this album for all the reason's I described above , revelling in it's spontaneity and deconstructed symphonies .To me it's sounds like a band trying too hard to be different ,in one way admirable -until you hear the album that is . That's the only reason I give this an extra star.. The ambition is there .Evangelicals just lack the craft to back it up.....shame .This is one sermon that fell on deaf ears.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glam in dreams - Underwater and in the stars, 11 Mar 2008
This is a stunning album, with an original production and a far more original sound-project than the one behind the Flaming Lips' recent efforts, sorry for the FL fans, but please it's time to face the truth. Washes of liquid vintage synths, crystal jingle-jangle guitars appearing and vanishing, crowds of souls in limbo taking the lead, frippian solos, vaudeville takes, ballads from a teen Rufus Wainwright possessed by the ghost of a Max Fleischer cartoon, all in a flux that (miracle) keeps sounding like pop music, just over-coloured and refracted in mirrors facing the stars (of Broadway?). Think a bit of Todd Rundgren marrying Brian Eno, or Arcade Fire underwater, in slow but happy decomposition, laughing at themselves while watching their selves disintegrating. There are echoes of many Brit artists between wave and pop, but all is played with a couldn't care less approach which makes them attractive, as the work on the arrangement and production tells the exact opposite: this record was the result of long dedicated work. Note: Apparently they declared this album was meant to sound like 'The Rocky Horror' meet Marvin Gaye... That sounds fun. And this too.
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