The Black Angels are psychedelic enough to put you in a trance, actual psychedelics not necessary.
At Stubb’s on Sunday, preceding San Francisco ensemble Brian Jonestown Massacre flourished a typically Haight-Ashbury set that previewed their upcoming album. Hooky, mulch-y lead single “Hold That Thought” proved fresh enough that head mystic Anton Newcombe read it off a music stand. Crowd favorite “Anemone,” off 1996 double-album opus Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request, cast a kaleidoscopic drug haze in contrast to the almost 30-year-old gang’s peppier new material.
Founded in 2004 with a name derived from Velvet Underground song “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” the powerhouse Austin institution behind Levitation opened as guitarist Christian Bland ticked out “Young Men Dead” with roiling chords that forced even this vehement non-headbanger to nod. Frontman Alex Maas brought equal locomotion with maracas on the pulsing heartbeat of “Entrance Song,” off 2010’s Phosphene Dream, wailing, “Rolling fast down I-45/ Bending time, feelin’ fine” as Bland and bass demon Kyle Hunt plucked at your gut.
“Currency,” off 2017’s dark, gritty Death Song, loped more balladic than on the album, Jake Garcia and Maas’ warbles and guitars dominating the glowering pop prophecy about the U.S. monetary system. On LP mate “I’d Kill for her,” snarling love laments of doom and gloom coated an ongoing query into the danger of nationalistic extremism.
People drive and fly in from all over to attend Levitation and let 10 minute riffs bend into staccato, scream-inducing reveries, and the host locals delivered that without devolving into bedlam. Each element of the Black Angels stayed mostly separate until pure jam mode drove the performance to its natural conclusion. The drones are sparser now, cleaning up the live sonics on a track such “Currency.”
This allowed each instrument its own space rather than everything twisting into excess noise. Noisy is good, but just noise is not. No matter how psychedelic the wails got, every song blended into the next, otherworldly bass lines and noir beats bringing it all back home to Levitation 2018.
This article appears in April 27 • 2018.