The Black Angels Passover

[Light in the Attic; 2006]

Styles: bygone-era rock ‘n’ roll that echoes like the ’50s and struts like the ’70s
Others: The Warlocks, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Raveonettes

Now that indie folk are talking less about retro-fitted rock and more about freak-folk and noise, flamboyant vocalist Alex Maas and The Black Angels give us yet ANOTHER reason to NOT discuss The Libertines. Well played, sir... Passover goes for the jugular as if The Jesus And Mary Chain never existed, grabbing the listener by the giblet for ten simplistic, urgent tracks. Stumble across the flat 4/4 beat, reverb, and purring of "The Prodigal Son" and you may just confuse thee Angels with Internal Wrangler-era Clinic, but fasting through the remainder of Passover yields an increasingly musty, dusty sound that fashions urgency from a simple recipe of repetition, repetition, and – stay with me, captain – repetition.

I am not shitting you here; the smear of smutty ear-stains like "Black Grease" are so uniform throughout that Stephanie Bailey's filthy beats could pass for the patter of a pre-programmed drum machine; the same goes for the rest of the Black Angus crew, which churns out the same riff/line/part/phrase over and over so's Maas can properly wet his whistle. And he does; oh, does he ever! Wringing his voice out like a soaked pair of panties – just go with it, brogurt -- Maas amasses a shitload of hoots and hollers to push his outfit's meat 'n' potatoes rawk over the top. The guster he musters may not be piercing enough to fluster today's desensitized listener, but the relationship between his almost condescending caterwauling and the rootsy, deviation-less music behind it has to be heard multiple times to be truly appreciated.

By no means a revelation, the far-away echoes of The Black Angels' Passover are so achingly consistent, so damned adamant you'll find yourself wishing the distant guitars would chime on forever and ever and ever and – bear with me, chief – ever and, you know, ever. Maas' mildly fascinating distillation of Lou Reed's non-plussed ramble and Ade Blackburn's cutesy coo serves as both the rudder and the focal point of the album, however, guiding the listener through a library of forgotten freshness while also jump-kicking our ever-lovin' grills with a left-right-left-left.

1. Young Men Dead
2. The First Vietnamese War
3. The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven
4. The Prodigal Sun
5. Black Grease
6. Manipulation
7. Empire
8. Better Off Alone
9. Bloodhounds on My Trail
10. Call to Arms

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