In Ambrose Bierce’s 1890 short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, a would-be Civil War saboteur named Peyton Farquhar is caught and sentenced to hang. During his execution, his perception of time, memory, and physical reality begins to warp. He vividly hallucinates, and ultimately he dies, but not before experiencing one last bittersweet spasm of happiness and hope. On The Black Angels’ latest EP, Clear Lake Forest, there’s a song called “An Occurrence at 4507 South Third Street”—and the resemblance to the Bierce story can’t be an accident. It drifts in a kind of murky, death-steeped dreaminess, and then there’s the sick gallows joke at the heart of the song’s chorus: “You keep me hanging on.”
The Black Angels’ fourth and most recent full-length, 2013’s Indigo Meadow, suffered from a lack of that murky, dreamy atmosphere. It was so hi-fi that it hurt, with no room left for the listener to meet the material halfway—which is part of the function and the fascination of psychedelic music. Psychedelia can be vivid, but it shouldn’t be HD, and the Austin band has corrected that mistake on Clear Lake Forest. Like “Owl Creek Bridge”, there’s ambiguity and space for interpretation, both sonically and lyrically. “An Occurrence at 4507 South Third Street” jerks and pounds on a sinister organ riff, churning up the rotted flotsam of the '60s that Boomers seem happy to forget. “Tired Eyes” and “Sunday Evening” are two of the flat-out catchiest, most dynamic songs the group has ever recorded, with frontman Alex Maas’ trippy croon finding new ways to thread their way through some truly inspired pastiches of Summer-of-Love jangle and echo.
That inspiration hasn’t felt so strong since The Black Angels’ 2006 debut, Passover. But that was eight years ago, when they were more locked into a holding pattern of overdriven drones. There’s far more range here, but Clear Lake Forest’s influences tend to feel more like Easter eggs than stepping stones. “Sunday Evening” is a blob of psyche-pop bubblegum that’s as sweet as (but also more sour than) the Lemon Pipers; “Diamond Eyes” summons Tommy James-level tremolo and reverb, even as it lets the oscillations fall in and out of synch with the beat in a bleary smear of rhythmic phasing. As psychedelic influences go, these are not deep, and so “An Occurrence at 4507 South Third Street” invokes the smoky menace of Brecht/Weill’s “Alabama Song” through the middleman of The Doors’ cover, which is almost shamefully mimicked.
The mishandling of influences has long been a problem of the Black Angels, although it’s also been part of the thrill of seeing them evolve. At the least, they’ve always been open about paying homage to their heroes, right down to the group’s Velvet Underground-referencing name. But on one of Clear Lake Forest’s worst tracks, “Linda’s Gone”, that worship once again crosses over into near parody; the song’s taut, stuttering lead guitar is a far too on-the-nose reference to VU’s “Run Run Run”, it manages to sound reverent and cavalier at the same time, and not in a good way.
The EP’s other low point, “The Executioner”, is a soggy wad of weak blotter acid that serves only one real purpose: It links to the lyrics of “An Occurrence at 4507 South Third Street”, right down to the line “A rope for your sins”, reinforcing the loose concept winding through the record. The Black Angels deserve credit for attempting what is, in essence, a mini-concept album rendered in subtle, muted shades. It’s a lot to tackle in seven songs, but there’s a depth and richness in both texture and songwriting that show glimpses of a new direction, one that might free them from their own drone-rock noose.
