[from Portland, LA & Joshua Tree] so here’s the story –
I came to love one song (“Good Bye Mary Lou”), a punkish bluegrass song, by
this no-name band called Angels of Light and propagated it through all mixes
therewith – I had a vague notion of Akron/Family but didn’t know they’d been
the backing band for Angels of Light until I read their show bio – the show bio
also mentioned Michael Gira as the lead singer of Angels of Light which got
Rockboy excited because he knew him as the lead singer of the Swans – anyway,
we went to this show because of a string of distant associations – I was mostly
pleased and the anti-anything-remotely-psychedelic Rockboy was not – they are
in essence a jam band, tapping such a wide variety of sounds that I characterize
them officially as a schizophrenic band – they literally have no distinguishing
characteristic which, even if I am a girl who loves variety, may not be a good
thing for a band looking to make a name for themselves – they began with a song
that made me love them: a more psychedelic Songs: Ohia (melancholy folk) –
suddenly it was thrash which firstly is a signature move of this generation (to
intersperse loveliness with hardness) and secondly seemed an misguided attempt
to prove they’re not soft or that they’re hip to all aspects of our culture –
but in sum, it didn’t sound good and it didn’t sound organic – they then
proceeded into the other tagsound of this generation of music, Afro pop, which
they did very well, reminding me of Paul Simon – in the end, I believe that
they will return, if they want to endure, to the sounds that are their
strength: very pretty and sophisticated pop – if it matters, they dress like
70s road hippies with t-shirts and bandanas which seemed to me a lame attempt
to suggest campfire jams. (Photo courtesy of
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