PRESS
ANGELS OF LIGHT Sing Other People | Review
His ongoing distillation could prove to be a beneficial example to the now-popular movement he has otherwise helped to foster anyway.
Michael Gira continues down an emotionally pointillist path here, yet this time around he appears to have swerved onto the somewhat wider, and zeitgeist-bricked, new folk freeway. This has probably to do with his helping to usher in the career of one of its leading lights, Devendra Banhart, and as well in his electing to bring the amiably cosmic, comparatively fresh-faced Akron/Family in as his backing band for this particular release. Whereas he at least presently directs the general thematic emphases in the music towards an archetypal Western/Southwestern nature, and far more avidly than someone like Banhart does (or Joanna Newsom, or Animal Collective), he is also more reliant upon a clear and classic stentorian vocal manner in keeping with all of this. His ongoing distillation could prove to be a beneficial example to the now-popular movement he has otherwise helped to foster anyway. [DHo]