(Mistletone Records)

The nutters have overrun the asylum! Wait, now they’re writing songs… actually that’s good stuff

As those penetrating and fear-filled eyes on the album cover stare back at me, my initial reaction is ‘Wow, horror-metal, they’ve really picked the right guy to review this one’. Thankfully my first impressions are generally miles off, as The Evening Descends is a different beast altogether. The album opening title-track jumps between freefloating snippets of vocals and dance-friendly glitch-pop, complete with fingerclicks and mounds of keyboards. Maybe they were exposed to something traumatic in their youth, perhaps they’re actually old acid casualties, but Evangelicals seem to be a band that’s at least one chapter short of a whole book. And it’s not ‘oh, look how zany we are! This guy has funny coloured hair, I have a Care Bears T-shirt! WACKYYY!!!!’. No, think somewhere along the lines of Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips, combined with incorrectly prescribed psychotropic drugs for a more apt description of their weirdness. The wailing vocals of guitarist/songwriter Josh Jones even manage a pretty good update of Mr Coyne’s high-pitched croon. The middle trio of Party Crashin’, Snowflakes and How Do You Sleep? are definitely to be heard back to back, moving from new wave joy to forlorn balladry (with bittersweet ambient keys and echo-drenched vocals, of course) to climactic Arcade Fire-type bombast. I’ve mentioned too many bands here, but there’s plenty of stuff Evangelicals can claim as their own on their sophomore effort. Jones later chants in Bellawood, the group’s tale of an extended stay in a mental asylum, Strange things keep happening / all around my head. If this is true, the man should keep sharing these strange things with the rest of us.

***½

MITCH ALEXANDER

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