The Daily Spin, January 15
Evangelicals | The Evening Descends
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023. Guess who’s back posting these when people are awake! Finger guns This guy!
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here.
If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!
Album: The Evening Descends (2008)
Artist: Evangelicals
Link:
It’s times like these that I’m reminded just how much amazing music is out there, as this is group I had quite literally never heard of and very likely wouldn’t have happened across - an album from 15 - no, wait, that can’t be right, 2008 is like a decade back at most - years ago produced by a tiny band from Oklahoma with a couple thousand monthly listeners on Spotify - yet here we are, with me giving this an absolute stamp of approval.
Only one song on this album has more than 100,000 plays - Skeleton Man, at 100,215 - and yet that’s one of the weak points of the album. This is a treasure trove of power-ballad influenced indie rock, sort of like Fitz and the Tantrums met The Head and the Heart and took a little piece of Magic Man with them (despite preceding most of these acts).
It’s really unique, and while I don’t love the formatting of the album as a sort of balladic opera, I think this album does it better than others I’ve reviewed. Despite clunky instrumentals at times, when the lyrics hit true, they do so warmly enveloped by guitar that adds a sort of fuzzy authenticity to what lead singer Josh Jones is going off about.
The close to the album brings what sits with me as a pretty underwhelming mid-section back up to par through the three strongest songs on the album - I mean, that is absolutely how you close an indie rock venture.
Rating: 7.6/10
Best Tracks: Paperback Suicide; Stoned Again; Here in the Deadlights
Worst Tracks: Skeleton Man; Bellawood; How Do You Sleep?