THE ANGELS OF LIGHT

Despite technical issues and 1 set tragically cut short, Michael Gira's The Angels of Light shined in Austin and Oklahoma City. Virgil Shaw opened with a rocked out set of pleasant folk/blue grass/country-ish tunes. Gira, looking smart as usual in his fedora, gray dress jacket and slacks and cowboy boots, sang and played a black Guild acoustic electric guitar. Surrounding him were solid multi-instrumentalists Thor Harris, Larry Mullins and Dana Schechter on drums, percussion, vibes, piano, hammer dulcimer, autoharp, bass guitar, keyboard, melodica, organ and backing vocals. The sets are about an hour and a half worth of new songs and ones from "How I Loved You", Gira's "Solo/Acoustic" CD and a couple of SWANS reworkings: Evangeline, What Will Come (new), Nations (new), My Suicide, All Souls' Rising, New York Girls, The Rose of Los Angeles (new), What You Were, On The Mountain, Goddamn the Sun, Failure and Two Women. The new songs are fantatic, especially the memorable mounting groove of "Nations" and the violent orgasm of "All Souls' Rising". Gira did not disappoint, especially in OKC when he became the possessed man I've become accustomed to witnessing: eyes closed, head bobbing around and mouth moving as though he's chewing an imaginary cud, yelling off mike, reeling in his stool and strumming hand slamming the guitar to the point of drawing blood. The tour swings back through the Midwest and ends in NYC on the 20th. See younggodrecords.com for dates and more info.