Wilderness of Mirrors
A conversation with Stephanie Bailey on The Black Angels’ new album.
Photo credit: Pooneh Ghana
It’s been 5 years since The Black Angels released an album, and in September 16 the wait will be finally over. Following the acclaimed Death Song LP, 'Wilderness of Mirrors' is their latest full-length release on Partisan Records.
It’s 10 am in Austin, Texas and Stephanie Bailey hasn’t gone to bed yet, it’s been a night out of a movie, her neighbour’s house caught fire because of July 4th fireworks, two cars exploded on her street and the wifi has been down since then. Still, she takes the time to talk to We The Cool about The Black Angels’ upcoming release.
Since forming in 2004, The Black Angels have become standard-bearers for modern psych-rock that create music that reflects a wide-screen view of the world black at us, helping distill the universal into something far more personal. Political tumult, the pandemic and the ongoing devastation of the environment have provided an ample folder for their signature sound and fierce lyrical commentary.
For Wilderness of Mirrors, they looked inward, focusing on both their ongoing creative and musical development as well as their own struggles amid the external chaos. As I was listening to the album I couldn’t help but notice the different sonic transitions the album conveys. It starts with songs like Without a Trace, featuring heavy riff guitars, moving on to 60s-inspired melodies in Firefly, then there’s an obvious new sound in my favorite album track, 100 Flowers of Paracusia where you can tell they’ve been experimenting with, and the album is finally put to sleep with a closing note in Suffocation.
“We always try to create a track order to help the album flow with both emotion and style,” Stephanie tells me. “It’s definitely a little different with this album, but we always focus on making a smooth transition, as you said is more about sonic than theme-wise, like when we go into that 60s sound.” She carries on. “It’s sort of like putting out a mixtape, where you go into it and then exit and then hopefully start again”.
Wilderness of Mirrors brings to the table a different type of creativity we hadn’t heard from The Black Angels since their debut record. The type of sound and experiment that it is only possible when there are no time restraints and songs are recorded on tape with all of the band together. “That bit of magic”, as Stephanie calls it.
“We recorded our first two albums in Austin, at Cacophony Records with Eric Walford, and we did have a lot of time to write, record, and produce,” she tells me. “With the rest of the albums, we were on a tight budget, and we had to get everything done as quickly as possible, but still leave room to experiment”, she carries on. “Wilderness of Mirrors was a huge decision for us in that way, we were able to rent out, our friends Brett Orin’s studio - who used to be our front-of-house engineer - for a month, so we had time to write on our own and then he would come in and help us create a certain noise while we were recording, so there was a lot of room to experiment and reflect”. She says. “There weren’t any rules, time didn’t really exist, it felt like we had an empty canvas”.
“One of my favorite parts about playing music and being a musician is being in the studio and being able to create whatever crazy noise you hear in your head, seeing it come to fruition in the studio and in real life, and then seeing how it plays out on a song or with a melody”.
While COVID and isolation gave The Black Angels more room to experiment sonically it also allowed them to introspect on the current state of the world. The more they looked, the more it happened, and the worse it got, only to realise that the only ones responsible for it are ourselves.
“Everything is crumbling. So, what’s next? What has to happen next for us to have this call to arms?” Stephanie says as we discuss the current political climate, the number of shootings going on in the USA, the revoking of abortion rights, and the environmental issues consuming the world faster than we could’ve ever imagined. “It feels like the world is kind of imploding in people, there's blood in the streets and it's really sad actually, but it's basically a reminder that no one's gonna help us, we have to be the ones that want to survive and want to change and make a difference.” The drummer explains. “It feels like we are all turning on each other and there has to be a turning point where we do come together, but if you think about it, it’s not a bright future.”
The conversation carried my train of thought to the title of the album, so I had to ask if the name Wilderness of Mirrors allured to it all. How we are all reflecting on each other and the mess we’ve created for ourselves, to which Stephanie replied: “Exactly! People these days will use a slide of hand to create smoke and mirrors and basically reflect what they want you to see, making a huge mess of things so you don’t see it all, it’s the sensationalism that happens with news and media.”
Being born in Mexico and being a native Spanish speaker I couldn’t help noticing that two tracks on their album have Spanish names, their latest single El Jardín - their first single from the album- and La Pared (Govt. Wall Blues), which references the infamous wall Trump wanted to build between Mexico and The USA. But what got me the most was a line at the end of the song that said: “You can build this wall of hate, but we’ll never separate”. To which Stephanie explained: “It’s not just about that wall, also the Berlin wall, just all sorts of barriers that have stopped people from coming together and being able to unite and ostracizing groups of people for wrong, disgusting reasons. It's been a historical repetitive issue since the beginning of time.” Which again, comes down to what we were talking about before.
“El Jardín is a love story, and a beautiful one”, she then explained. “ We travel a lot to Mexico for music and it’s always electric and vibrant, it’s kind of our way to pay respect to these places”, she said. It’s also worth mentioning that two members of the band are of Mexican descent and that she being from Texas grew up fluent in Spanish because the influence Mexico has on the state is undeniable. She then told me about these places in Seabrook Texas, called “El Jardín”, and how it made sense to name a song that also referenced Adam and Eve after a place of significance to so many Texan natives that come from Mexican descendants.
“When you have a band that it’s known for their fuzzy aggressive guitars, it’s good to show a lighter, softer side, even if through lyrics, it feels like being vulnerable in a way”.
The Black Angels have played a few festivals in Mexico, and they always urge to return. As Stephanie mentioned before there’s something so vibrant about the city that is always inspiring. We carried on talking about Mexico when I asked if they were any bands from The Fonki Hole they ever referenced “I could say that a hundred percent yes, Ramiro probably does, he is very diverse with his references”. She answered.
Just as we were about to wrap up the interview I wanted to talk to Stephanie about a fact a friend had pointed out earlier. Over the last 18 years since The Black Angels started a new wave of psychedelic bands like Tame Impala started to leave the underground scene to become more and more mainstream. It is now a genre appreciated by so much more people, where even bands like King Gizzard started to headline festivals with a wider audience, a fact that feels amazing to Stephanie.
“To see this from our little bubble is amazing, and inspiring”, she says. “From being 20 years old, starting with like 10 people being at a show, sleeping on a van with one sleeping bag not knowing if we were going to make it in the music business but just doing it out of love because there was nothing that I loved more to see now over 50,000 people congregate that love the same thing and to witness how much it brings people together is inspiring, and a happy, good, and warm feeling to be a part of it in any matter, whether I affected one person or two people as long as is it was positive”.
The Black Angels will be touring around the USA after the release of their album and will headline Levitation Festival at the end of October.
You can pre-order Wilderness of Mirrors here.