Flower-power band crafts fresh ode to madness
After releasing a debut that sounds like an extended trip through Willy Wonka’s hallucinogenic love tunnel, Josh Jones and his Evangelicals return with a second dosage of schizophrenic pop on The Evening Descends. As on 2006’s So Gone, Jones is your bug-eyed tour guide, steering the album through harrowing tales of skeleton men, fatal auto accidents and encroaching insanity. Once again, the production is syrupy thick. Haunted-house backing vocals, spooky synths and oversexed guitars combine to give Evening the delightfully campy horror-movie vibe that its album art suggests. But for all of the similarity between albums, Evangelicals have their reckless sound on a leash for this effort. Whereas So Gone occasionally feels like stream-of-consciousness babble, Evangelicals have now tightened the screw and set their sights on something more coherent and cinematic. Their prowess must be growing… and their certainly not showing… any signs of slowing.