Soul power

Oklahoma’s Evangelicals spread
the psychedelic gospel

MIND-BLOWING: Evangelicals

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Named for their zealous approach to music, and not the religious movement that’s part of the scenery in their native Oklahoma, Evangelicals are nevertheless products of their environment. The quartet is based in Norman, the town from whence the Flaming Lips came. Evangelicals frontman Josh Jones, onetime guitar tech for the Mooney Suzuki, was a member of Stardeath and the White Dwarfs with Dennis Coyne, nephew of the Lips’ Wayne Coyne, and once had the opportunity to be the sweat act for that band’s spectacular live production.

Jones was first awestruck by the music scene in Norman (pop. 100,000) at the age of 11, when his family relocated from an even smaller town in the state’s southwest. “All of a sudden, being turned on to all this crazy stuff by all these new friends, was really mind-blowing for me,” says Jones. “I feel very lucky to have been exposed to such unique music at such a young age, when music impacts you so much more.”

Influences aside, Evangelicals offer a transcendental experience all their own. Featherweight vocals and cotton-candy melodies waft through lush, psychedelic soundscapes where sonic logic is ignored, where rabid rock riffs and bedroom electro stand on even ground. This is especially true of the band’s 2006 debut album, So Gone, the brainchild of Jones, who crafted the record all on his lonesome.

Following a label switch, from Misra to Dead Oceans, and the adoption of a more collaborative approach with a proper band—namely bassist/keyboardist Kyle Davis, drummer Austin Stephens and guitarist Todd Jackson—Evangelicals released a brilliant sophomore record, entitled The Evening Descends, back in January.

“It’s more focused,” says Jones, “a little less frantic, a little more chilled out.” As cohesive as it is, it runs with the weird ways of its predecessor, nestling into a sonic universe that Jones has described as “Marvin Gaye meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

“Strange things keep happening,” sings Jones in his androgynous pitch, fading into the wallpaper on “Bellawood.” Save for a synthpop anthem here and a twee pop tune there, this material wouldn’t sound out of place on outsider New Jersey radio station WFMU, or on the next Of Montreal album, if Kevin Barnes were to replace his daily dose of anti-depressants with acid. It’s a darker album too, especially its lyrics, which reveal a longing for escape.

“It reflects growing up in the town where I was born and, you know, Norman is still in Oklahoma,” says Jones. “But that can happen in any kind of town if you feel like you don’t have any friends, whatever your problems are—the need to escape can always be there.”

That said, Jones and his bandmates are content with their cheap rent and non-committal employment as clerks, bartenders and waiters, the kind of jobs where the bosses are often sympathetic to the transient ways of struggling artists.

“And if they’re not, it’s not like you’re quitting your job at an architecture firm,” says Jones. “I’m happy with where I am right now, but who knows, I may move to the big city one day.”

With Frog Eyes and Shearwater
at Club Lambi on Sunday,
June 22, 9 p.m., $12