MARCH 23 / 8:00PM
21 & Over / $10 Advance

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Nectar Presents:

Evangelicals

Headlights

• Southerly

Evangelicals

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.

Headlights

From its inception, Headlights has represented an exercise in developing a musical vision. Following years of bringing the visions of others to life in the acclaimed pop act Absinthe Blind (Parasol Records), the three members of Headlights together provide insight into what they brought to the table in their former band, as well as how it limited them. In an immense and prosperous moment, the band is now more than ever an entity of its own. Simply put, Headlights is anything but mere byproduct.

Following the demise of Absinthe Blind, Erin Fein and Brett Sanderson formed the short-lived guitarless band Orphans, which provided Fein a developmental first outlet as principle songwriter. Soon, Tristan Wraight returned to Champaign from a stint on the road as touring guitarist for Maserati and joined the band, invoking a startling change as he and Fein began a prolific period of songwriting together. The band changed completely, and in the thaw of the Illinois spring of 2004, Headlights was born in a farmhouse just north of Champaign.

The band quickly put together a set of songs and The Enemies EP was recorded at the band's farmhouse studio in a flourish. The EP was released to critical acclaim as a limited edition mailorder and tour-only EP. The first pressing sold out in a matter of a few short months. Headlights went on to share the stage with The Delgados, Mates of State, Magnolia Electric Co., The Appleseed Cast, Headphones, Mono, Earlimart, to name a few.

Headlights has been on tour long and often since, first branching throughout the Midwest and finally crossing the country (and back, several times now). In the process, Wraight and Fein have come to fruition as songwriters. Songs from Kill Them With Kindness found their way into setlists throughout 2005, with each show leaving old fans agog and gaining new fans to boot. The separate instrumental entities of Headlights' three members seems to become more coherent with each sitting, highlighting the band's development of an uncanny knack for soaring peaks and energetic compositions. The brilliant desperation of The Enemies EP proves to be alive and well in the new compositions but now accompanying it is a flourish of pop-orchestra instrumentation and epic harmonies. The promise inherent in Headlights' debut LP brought The Enemies EP an official release in non-limited form in November of 2005, and Headlights consequentially became an official member of the Polyvinyl Record Co. family.

LINKS

• Evangelicals on MySpace
• Headlights on Myspace
• Southerly on Myspace

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