Everything and the kitchen sink. That is what Evangelicals throw at their latest maximalist power drama of an album, The Evening Descends. Whereas their last album, So Gone, doted in whimsical sonic experimentation, on The Evening Descends, the experimentation has become practice and the whimsy - confident arrangement. Evangelicals are at their best when the rhythm and melody are front and center in the song, unfortunately this isn’t always the case and many of the songs are bogged down in aural ephemera and camp drama.
I am always a fan of noise, double-tracking, tape-looping, injections of field recordings and found sounds, toy instruments, maximalist arrangements, distortion, echo, and reverb, but on The Evening Descends I feel as though the sugar rush busy-ness of many songs could have benefited from a bit of restraint, something that Evangelicals don’t include in their collective musical vocabulary. While busy-ness can be engaging on many levels, it can be overwhelming. Whereas a Jackson Pollock painting is busy, it is contained by the fact that it is the exploration of two spaces: positive and negative. Listening to The Evening Descends is the aural equivalent of witnessing the construction of a painting by Pollock, Johns, Warhol, and Litchenstein on a single canvas and attempting interpretation.
That’s not to say that there aren’t great songs here. I just tend to prefer to listen to the songs on The Evening Descends individually rather than as an album or in one sitting. However, if you wish to be saturated with sound, then Evangelicals have created a saccharine sonic shower from the theatre of the absurd for you to sate your Sisyphean indulgences.
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