Album Review: The Black Angels - Indigo Meadow

One of the highlights of last year's Harvest festival would have been lying on the grass in the mid-afternoon sun and listening to the fuzzy, spaced-out drones of The Black Angels that filled the air with strange vibrations. The outfit's latest long-player finds the powerfully overwhelming and mind expanding psychedelics of their earlier work transforming into flower-powered paisley pop. The blunted stoner slouch has stepped up to a more forthright, edgier and aggressive approach. The sinister narcotic drones are reigned in as the band do their best to sound like a long forgotten '60s garage band recently remembered on a Nuggets compilation.

Referencing acts like The Yardbirds, The Doors, The Byrds and many of the bands Alan McGee would have liked to signed to Creation, The Black Angels for the first time achieve an accessibility that is sure to surprise fans of their earlier work. This is perhaps best exemplified on the cautionary Don't Play With Guns and War On Holiday, which come with anthemic hooks that would have given these songs some traction on the charts back in 1966. It's interesting that the antiwar sentiment of Broken Soldier would have been as relevant in the '60s as it is today. The production is of course crisper and cleaner than anything that would have been recorded back in the day. The glorious acid rock of I Hear Colours is a technicolour highlight. The woozy pastel colours of Holland with its swirls of organ and mellotron is a delight. Slowing things down, the brooding Black Isn't Black approaches a dark, almost gothic vibe. Exploring a different facet of the psychedelic '60s this time around, The Black Angels still take us on quite a trip.