THE BLACK ANGELS

Phosphene Dream

[Blue Horizon Ventures]

On “Sunday Afternoon,” the fourth song on their third album, the Black Angels prove just how far they’ll follow their cult-like obsession with the ’60s. Having already unleashed its usual barrage of fuzz-and-buzz guitars and organs, the sextet goes all in and recreates the wobbly electric-jug sound of the 13th Floor Elevators, a fellow Austin band that invented psychedelic punk some 40 years ago. Not content to reference one classic garage band, the Angels add to that same song some vintage Vox organ, the kind used by Question Mark and the Mysterians. The result is one of the lighter tunes on a record specked with bubblegum innocence and Easy Rider menace. Blatantly nostalgic but thrilling all the same, Phosphene Dream has it all: good trips (“Yellow Elevator #2”), bad trips (“River of Blood”) and road trips (“Entrance Song”). The only real surprise is that it takes until the eighth track, “True Believers,” for Jesus and Buddha to crash the party. –KP