Doesn't It Make You Angry?
My year with The Black Angels
PREFACE
There's a lot packed into this one. So much happened in this single year that I could probably write ten separate essays. This one is the overview, the shape of the whole year. I'll come back and tell the smaller stories properly in time. I've also included a handful of video links along the way, hopefully they help put you in the same headspace I was in that year.
I’d known the Black Angels for years before any of this. I’ve written previously about how I met Alex and Christian, back when they didn’t even have a band name yet. We stayed in touch over the years. At one point, passing through Austin with the High Dials, they mentioned they were working on a song and asked if I’d stop by and track some sitar. That song ended up being called “Deer-Ree-Shee,” on their album Directions to See a Ghost. They never really had a title for it, so they just phonetically approximated my name, incorrectly, as I’ve pointed out to them since.
By 2011, that loose connection had turned into something more concrete. I got invited to play Austin Psych Fest at the Seaholm Power Plant, sitting in with the band and floating between other sets. Later that year they reached out for something bigger, they were playing Bonnaroo and wanted something special, so I flew down to Tennessee and played sitar, the same way I had in Austin.
Then Coachella 2012 got announced, and that's really where things moved. I reached out half joking, told them if they ever wanted some sitar at Coachella, I was around. Christian wrote back and asked how I'd feel about playing bass too. Nate wasn't in the band anymore. I said yes without much hesitation (also after checking with Kirsty). I was already going to be in Austin with Elephant Stone for SXSW, so I flew down, while suffering from hand-foot-mouth disease gifted to me by my daughter (intense!), rehearsed with them, and played a few shows to get my (blistered) feet under me before the festival.
The timing lined up with something else: Coachella run had us touring alongside the Horrors, whose album Skying had been one of my favorites the year before. We rehearsed at our friend Rob Campanella’s place in LA, then set out on the run together, and it was on that tour that I became close friends with Tom (Furse) from the Horrors.
From Coachella, the year just kept moving. A run took us between Lollapalooza in Chicago and Osheaga back home in Montreal, and somewhere in between we swung through Rochester, where my friend John Mark Lapham from the Earlies happened to be living. JM and I had been working on a song together, nothing solid yet, no name… just a drum beat, bass, and some droney synths. At some point he asked if I knew any singers who might be a fit. I mentioned Alex. When the three of us met up in Rochester, I brought it up, and Alex said he’d give it a try. None of us knew it at the time, but that was the beginning of MIEN.
Right after that Coachella run, I played Austin Psych Fest 2012 with the Black Angels. That was the same APF where I first joined BJM on stage for "Supersonic," a night that deserves its own story someday.
The year kept unfolding from there. A few months later I flew back to Austin for Fun Fun Fun Fest, and from there we headed to Australia for Harvest Festival, where I ended up on stage with Beck, a story I’ve also told in a previous article. It was in Chicago, on a late night set at Double Door after our Lollapalooza gig, that I looked out and saw Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys sitting right at the foot of my sitar riser, watching the entire show. In Australia, I found myself talking with members of Grizzly Bear, and when I mentioned I was playing with the Black Angels, their eyes lit up, they told me how loved Passover when they were first starting out. Also in Australia, I got to watch War on Drugs play nearly every day of Harvest Fest, and I was completely obsessed with Slave Ambient at the time. Adam Granduciel and I became close that tour, stayed in touch for a while afterward, until he eventually just started ghosting me. Oh, well.
Looking back, it was a year of real self discovery. I’d never toured at that level before, with a band that successful, at that height. The Black Angels were wrapping up the album cycle for Phosphene Dream, and everything around them felt electric… and all the while I was writing and recording Elephant Stone’s self titled album. All of it, the music, the people, it seeped into what I was making, whether I realized it in the moment or not. The year wound down with a two night New Year's Eve run at the Bluebird Theater in Denver, a fitting close to everything that had happened since Coachella.
But the moment that’s stayed with me most from that whole year didn’t happen on any stage. It happened in the van on our drive into Chicago, heading toward Lollapalooza. Tame Impala had just released the first single off Lonerism, “Apocalypse Dreams.” I mentioned it to Alex, told him I’d just heard it, that it was really good. He asked me a question I didn’t expect.
“How does it make you feel? Does it make you angry?”
I paused, not really understanding what he meant. I said something like, “I don’t know, I guess it made me feel good?” And he said it again, quieter this time. “Doesn’t it make you angry?”
It took me a while to understand what he was actually saying. For Alex, hearing something that good wasn’t just enjoyable, it was a challenge. It should light a fire in you. You should feel something, a kind of urgency that says I need to go further than that and bring more of yourself to your art. Passion, not contentment. That’s what I took away from my year with the Angels, more than any single show or festival (well, playing with Beck was pretty life changing). I needed a fire. And I’ve been trying to keep that flame alive ever since.