Tiny Desk Concerts
The Black Angels: Tiny Desk Concert
The Black Angels' music is hardly the stuff of stripped-down acoustic confessionals: It's the sound of a distant rumble, possibly beamed from a garage in the early '70s. So when we got word that the Austin-based psych-rock band would go acoustic for this Tiny Desk Concert in the NPR Music offices, a mystery was born: namely, "Huh?"
Amazingly, what we got came largely without amplification or electricity, with one notable exception: Singer Alex Maas got his own vocal mic so he could be properly filtered for full, dreamy, otherworldly effect. The resulting four songs, three of which appear on 2010's Phosphene Dream, showcase a bold and surprising mix of sensibilities — at once icy and rustic, cavernous and confined.