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THE BLACK ANGELS: Directions To See A Ghost [Light In The Attic]

If the Black Angels’ 2006 debut was about the unraveling of the American dream—10 songs of alienation and anomie employing war metaphors to connote the sheer horror of existence—then the Austin sextet’s sophomore platter is the sound of recovery and healing. Musically, all the touchstones that made Passover so riveting are in place on Directions To See A Ghost: organ, fuzz/reverb guitar and sitar-laced dronescapes; hypnotic tribal drums and thicker-than-strata bass; Alex Maas’ dramatic, Jim Morrison-esque vocals; and the lysergic ambience of Spacemen 3 and the Velvet Underground. The Black Angels still trade in darkness, and several songs on Ghost are as brutally claustrophobic and paranoid as anything on Passover. Thud-rocker “You On The Run” conjures images of freaks forced to go underground with The Man in hot pursuit, while the doomy “Mission District” is a pointed j’accuse with lyrics such as, “You only love yourself/You only care for you.” Yet the Black Angels are decidedly less monochromatic this time out, as exemplified by the chiming, almost airy “Doves” and the thrumming, upbeat “Deer-Ree-Shee.” Call Ghost post-apocalyptic: The horror has been supplanted by the survival instinct as citizens stagger out into the sunlight and begin rebuilding. [www.lightintheattic.net]

—Fred Mills