Hi All,

We are sad to report that there was a death in the family and we regrettably have to cancel the Seattle & Missoula shows.  We apologize for the last minute cancellation and promise to make it up to you in the new year.

On a side note, we have added two new shows in Louisville, KY on 11/13 and Columbus, OH on 11/14. 

See you in Salt Lake!

-Evangelicals

Hey All!

Hey!

I've been blogging on the road. Catch road madness at kylestourblog.tumblr.com!

Thanks!
Kyle

Head on over and become a fan!
Evangelicals on Facebook

See you this fall....!!!

Josh
Evangelicals.

Tonight (Sunday June, 8th) on the Subterranean program, which starts at midnight (ok, technically Monday morning...) MTV2 is gonna air the video for Midnight Vignette. Tune in and someone please Tivo it so we can watch it when we get home from Europe! (I've always wanted to see a video with our little name and director credit on the bottom left of the screen)
-Josh

we're comin to getcha....



05/21/08 Stockholm, SE - Debaser
05/22/08 Oslo, NO - Spasibar
05/23/08 Goteborg, SE - Pusterviksbaren
05/24/08 Kopenhagen, DK - Loppen w/ Bishop Allen
05/25/08 Aarhus, DK - Voxhall
05/26/08 Berlin, DE - White Trash
05/27/08 Koln, DE - Werkstatt w/ Bishop Allen
05/28/08 Amsterdam, NL - Paradiso
05/29/08 Groningen, NL - Vera
05/30/08 Utretch, NL - Ekko
05/31/08 Paris, FR - Flech D'or
06/02/08 Capri / Modena, IT - Mattaoio
06/04/08 Padova, Italy - Summer Student Festival
06/05/08 Fribourg, CH - Le Transformateur
06/06/08 Aarau, CH - Club Flosserplatz
06/07/08 Glasgow, UK - Captains Rest
06/08/08 Dublin, IR - Whelans
06/09/08 Belfast, UK - Auntie Anni
06/10/08 London, UK - ULU

So, the good folks over at Stereogum curated a sweet Bjork tribute album that we’re proud to be on. It’s a song for song remake of Post and we covered You’ve Been Flirting Again. The whole thing is free for download
HERE.
It’s a super sweet lineup including Liars, Xiu Xiu, Dirty Projectors, Final Fantasy, Atlas Sound, and more... there are also liner notes where each artist talks about the particular song they covered and how they went about it etc...
Go get it
-Josh.

Pitchfork Review


Alright!


Evangelicals
The Evening Descends
[Dead Oceans; 2008]
Rating: 8.3

In an interview with Pitchfork shortly after the release of Evangelicals' 2006 debut, So Gone, Josh Jones revealed that he was already plotting album no. 2: "I think it's going to be like Marvin Gaye meets the Rocky Horror Picture Show." He wasn't too far off the mark. OK, so maybe Jones' frantic falsetto isn't quite let's-get-it-on smooth, but his mention of the glam-rock musical was no gross overstatement: The Evening Descends is bursting with balcony-pitched histrionics, molten Brian May leads, and standing-ovation-worthy crashes. But what really makes this album special is the ways in which the Evangelicals pull off big-stage spectacle on what still sounds like a public-access cable-show budget.

More than their shared zip code and mutual affinity for lysergic pop songs, it's this thrifty ideology that most closely relates Evangelicals to the Flaming Lips-- specifically the anarchic mid-80s incarnation that proved a few well-utilized Christmas lights and fog machines can make a bar band look like Pink Floyd. But where So Gone deployed the kitchen-sink aesthetic in a more chaotic fashion-- with recording levels and synth squelches dropping in and out of the mix without warning-- on The Evening Descends, the production quirks and strange background noises mostly serve the songs' momentum rather than subvert them. Mind you, that's not a conclusion you'd immediately draw from the opening title track, a deconstructed lullaby that takes all of the Evangelicals' signature devices-- ghostly hums, glammy guitar swirls, video-game synth effects, subliminal conversations and Jones' fragile croon-- breaks them down and pieces them back together at random. But after this curious opener-- perhaps their fucked-up idea of a storybook-like introduction to set the album's nocturnal mood-- Evangelicals don't look back.

Like So Gone, the songs on The Evening Descends find Jones toeing the blurry lines separating ennui, intoxication and insanity. But the more patient, assertive performances (unlike So Gone, Jones recorded the new album with bassist Kyle Davis and drummer Austin Stephens) lends Jones' peculiar musings a greater degree of sincerity. When he sings "please don't tell my mother/ She wouldn't want to know/ I've been goin' crazy" (on "Midnight Vignette"), it sounds less like paranoid stoner-speak than a portrait of a very real domestic drama. The triumphant "Skeleton Man" presents an even more poignant portrait of an outcast in search of acceptance, his pleas for understanding set to a resolute, bouncing-ball march-- in step with Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)"-- that retains its composure even as the strangulated voices and mad-cap laughter inside his head threaten to overcome him. But it's a tentative peace: "How Do You Sleep"-- The Evening Descends' most over-the-top gesture-- gushes forth with a multi-tracked miasma of arpeggiated guitars and operatic shrieks; however, unlike the John Lennon classic of the same name, the song is not a scathing indictment but rather a genuine inquiry into overcoming recurring nightmares.

The Evening Descends' more considered depiction of Jones' psychosis does not come at the complete expense of Evangelicals' more playful whims: "Snowflakes" is a charming winter-wonderland ballad that's a close companion to So Gone's standout serenade "My Heartache", and the bad-trip breakdown of "Party Crashin'" is framed by cheeky faux hospital-drama dialogue between a doctor and an amputee, Jones' cries undercut by a chipper acoustic riff and wailing sirens. Evangelicals are mostly careful to not let their found-sound chicanery overwhelm their songs, however, "Bellawood"-- The Evening Descends' one out-and-out misstep-- is guilty of over-selling the drama, its story of institutionalization delivered with an uncharacteristically contrived performance by Jones and bogged down by B-movie shtickiness (Hitchcockian strings, Theremin effects). Perhaps it's an instant self-correcting measure that the song is immediately followed by "Paperback Suicide", a simple, glockenspieled power-pop number whose breezy, blissful demeanor craftily belies its tale of a frustrated writer who kills himself just to hear his own obituary-- a requiem for every struggling artist who's pondered infamy through the afterlife. And so The Evening Descends' storybook structure yields an important lesson: There's no need to fake the weird when you live in the real world.

-Stuart Berman, January 29, 2008

You can buy it from iTunes here:


..


Or order it from Insound here




The Evening Descends CD / LP (DOC004, released: 01/22/08)
The Evening Descends... and worlds collide. First you hear the prodigious musical skill: the deft guitar work, the clever pop sensibility, the wild arrangements. But then on other end of the spectrum there is the innocent and youthful charm of a trio of lost boys who seem to have no business making music with such maturity and sophistication. Taken together, you have Evangelicals, a wholly demented ensemble from Norman, OK. Dabbling in glam, slipping in a little funk and soul, drinking the psychedelic Kool-aid, blasting the synths, cranking up the guitars, and wrapping it all up with a dose of pop smarts, The Evening Descends is the first great album of 2008.

Picking up where their 2006 debut So Gone left off, Evangelicals leave behind much of their ADD-addled approach on The Evening Descends, instead taking their wealth of great ideas and harnessing them for good. The hyperactive, overdriven pop is still here, but it is balanced with restraint--not a lot, but enough--that allows the songs to shine through. All this and stories, too: Beneath the shrieks of guitars, keyboard blasts, and proggy space-age grooves, singer/guitarist Josh Jones leads the listener through tales of religion and revivalism, plus insanity, drugs, black-outs, zombies, good and evil, car crashes, love and a mental institution called Bellawood. Jones's wild narratives and propulsive pop songs are anchored with the right balance of stoicism and wit by bassist/keyboardist Kyle Davis and drummer Austin Stephens.

Still not sure what to make of the madness? Evangelicals' The Evening Descends just might be Oklahoma's answer to Prince's Around the World in a Day, but from the perspective of someone crashing at Pee-Wee's Playhouse... who happens to have a chainsaw slowly gnawing through his leg. The Evening Descends is crazy, self-assured and above all, a totally wild ride.