Evangelicals evening descends rar

Like So Gone , the songs on The Evening Descends find Jones toeing the blurry lines separating ennui, intoxication and insanity.

But the more patient, assertive performances unlike So Gone , Jones recorded the new album with bassist Kyle Davis and drummer Austin Stephens lends Jones' peculiar musings a greater degree of sincerity. The triumphant "Skeleton Man" presents an even more poignant portrait of an outcast in search of acceptance, his pleas for understanding set to a resolute, bouncing-ball march-- in step with Arcade Fire's "Rebellion Lies "-- that retains its composure even as the strangulated voices and mad-cap laughter inside his head threaten to overcome him.

But it's a tentative peace: "How Do You Sleep"-- The Evening Descends ' most over-the-top gesture-- gushes forth with a multi-tracked miasma of arpeggiated guitars and operatic shrieks; however, unlike the John Lennon classic of the same name, the song is not a scathing indictment but rather a genuine inquiry into overcoming recurring nightmares. The Evening Descends ' more considered depiction of Jones' psychosis does not come at the complete expense of Evangelicals' more playful whims: "Snowflakes" is a charming winter-wonderland ballad that's a close companion to So Gone 's standout serenade "My Heartache", and the bad-trip breakdown of "Party Crashin'" is framed by cheeky faux hospital-drama dialogue between a doctor and an amputee, Jones' cries undercut by a chipper acoustic riff and wailing sirens.

Evangelicals are mostly careful to not let their found-sound chicanery overwhelm their songs, however, "Bellawood"-- The Evening Descends ' one out-and-out misstep-- is guilty of over-selling the drama, its story of institutionalization delivered with an uncharacteristically contrived performance by Jones and bogged down by B-movie shtickiness Hitchcockian strings, Theremin effects. Perhaps it's an instant self-correcting measure that the song is immediately followed by "Paperback Suicide", a simple, glockenspieled power-pop number whose breezy, blissful demeanor craftily belies its tale of a frustrated writer who kills himself just to hear his own obituary-- a requiem for every struggling artist who's pondered infamy through the afterlife.

And so The Evening Descends ' storybook structure yields an important lesson: There's no need to fake the weird when you live in the real world. Skip to content Search query All Results.

But as the album winds on, things settle down considerably. The emotional landscape that the band addresses has likewise expanded. Throughout, the persona frontman Josh Jones presents is tortured but never too self-involved to alienate the listener. And, in fact, where the debut played off the dichotomy between psychedelic passages and straighter rock sections which often failed to fully blend , The Evening Descends veers decidedly to the former. On their sophomore album, Evangelicals give us a glimpse of a more mature, real band.

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