... Stupefaction ...: Webster Hall

Apr 11, 2013

On the scene: Black Angels, Webster Hall, NYC, April 8 by Liz Maher

On a stage sprayed with galactic swirling lights, the Black Angels opened their Webster Hall 4/8/13 gig with the heralding humming vocals of Vikings from Directions To See A Ghost. “Gonna bommmb you tiiillll Tuuuessday” Was this a clarion call to psych the hoi polloi, or just an attempt to persuade NYU Carlyle Court sophomores to buy fanboy merchandise? Maybe both. All those distortion devices cost money, and the BAs have tons of them. God knows how they move about onstage without tripping on a Maestro Fuzz fuzz pedal, Big Muff or something-they do look like so many mousetraps after a few shots. The paradox is it now takes high-tech digital processors to recreate low tech psycho grunge – like playing in a $5 million garage.

BAs are psych rockers hailing from Austin, Texas. Forget Portlandia, Austin is America’s permanent college town; so no wonder they prefer everything distorted. Predictably, our little Bad Asses met in college about ten years ago, probably in a Sabine Equation study group, and parodying the old joke about a second date, a U-Haul and a 40 oz., all moved into the same house. The result was their own mini-psych cult/band which reincarnates the less frightening elements of those other Texas psych band of yore, the 13th Floor Elevators, and Billy Gibbons' old band, Moving Sidewalks, who in some quantum magic afterlife, actually have been reincarnated. This new jangle fuzz (I invented this genre: main guitar is a Rick!) group are hosting Psych Festival - Year 6 in Austin at the end of April just in time to be bombed into obliteration by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un where everyone can look up and like really dig those cool missiles and the sense of temporality they portend. How ironic this makes all their anti-war songs: After the last t-shirt is sold there will be eternal peace. Continued after the jump.