Phosphene Dream

Black Angels – Phosphene Dream
Reviewed by Sadie O., 9/23/10
Psychedelic garage rock, a little Velvets, a little 60’s, even a little Floyd. Great stuff (everything – awesome), jangly guitars, psychically disturbing effects, distorted and hypnotic vocals. Third record (happily we have them all), outa Austin.
No FCCs detected – I really couldn’t make out much of the lyrics.
1. 4:27 ***(starts at 3 seconds) jangly, disturbed vibrations, monotonal vocals. Very Velvety. Suddenly crashes and goes into hyperdrive a minute from end.
2. 2:24 ***jangly guitar, almost bluesy. Garage rock, swaggering simple format, as it should be.
3. 4:57 *** midtempo psychedelic garage rock, swingy and cool. It’s always a bit startling when they actually modulate, as they do it so rarely. Cool guitar and farfisa solos. This one actually reminds me a bit of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds…
4. 2:44 **** weebly vibrations and frug-a-go-go. Super extra groovy!
5. 3:58 ** bit of feedback, then very loud aggressive rock with whammy bar, which fades to more Velvety sound when singing starts. Gets chaotically noisy towards end.
6. 3:39 **** Steppenwolfish guitar, robotish vocals. Neet! Also a hint of Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun…
7. 3:42 ***rock and roll, but on both heroin and cosmic insights. Vibrations, screams….
8. 4:33 **very low vibrations, very gradually growing for first half minute, then strumming of maybe a mandolin, pretty vocals, rather folky, until the usual druggy garage stuff after about a minute and a half. Whoohoo, they say! Then ominous didgeridoo kinda sounds, very slow, toward end, long fade.
9. 1:59 ***soft folky bit for a few seconds, then sort of surfer psych. Fun. You CAN twist to this.
10. 3:54 ***stoned slow psych blues, with lot o’ whammy. Slide solo, turning into something totally awesome in many directions.
Sadly, the record eventually comes to an end…