mxdwn’s Ric Leczel recently sat down with Christian Bland and Stephanie Bailey of Texas-based psychedelic rock band The Black Angels. Back in September 2022, the group released their critically acclaimed album Wilderness Of Mirrors. In this interview, Bland and Bailey discuss the inspiration behind the record’s tracks, touring schedules, the vinyl resurgence, graphic design, the current financial state of the music industry and more.

mxdwn: Hi, my name is Ric Leczel. I’m a feature Music Writer for mxdwn.com. I’m here today with Stephanie Bailey and Christian Bland from the Black Angels. Hi Stephanie. Hi Christian.

Christian Bland: Hello, how are you, Ric?

mxdwn: Thanks so much for taking the time out to talk to us today. I have been totally immersed in The Black Angels the past two days getting ready for this interview. I was kind of familiar with you around the edges, I guess from your hits, but really diving down the rabbit hole with you guys was cool.

CB: Awesome man cool, glad you’re enjoying it.

mxdwn: Yeah, it’s like you have a song for every occasion.

Stephanie Bailey: Awesome.

CB: Yeah, yeah, we tried to.

mxdwn: I’ve watched a lot of your interviews, so some of these questions are going to be like a little follow-up on some of the stuff I saw in your interviews.

CB: OK.

mxdwn: Looking back Stephanie, you and Alex were in the interview, and you said that you were laughing saying that 3,000,000 YouTube views were worth $3. How has the music business changed from your perspective now compared to when you guys first began?

SB: Oh, it’s changed a lot. I guess when we first began, well, you know, first of all, I guess labels aren’t exactly what labels used to be. There’s a lot, especially now after COVID, there’s the whole yeah, I don’t know, label. Just the music world or market, sorry I haven’t slept, but it’s so saturated now that basically there aren’t so many bands out there that people can pull music from so many different places. You don’t have to necessarily have representation to get your music out there, and a lot of companies like Spotify, you know they pay the artists very minimally so. Yeah, that’s what we were referring to.

CB: Yeah, I think that people don’t really, or like the new generation, don’t seem like they have a very long attention span. So, it seems, I mean, we’re all about the albums and each album, it’s kind of the concept albums. They all have a theme and they’re best listened to in their entirety, and not just as individual songs and so, right now, it doesn’t seem like the world is listening to things like they used to. With Sgt. Pepper’s there was a whole experience. That kind of idea is outdated for the younger generation or something. I know that it will come back around because things always come in waves. Then I mean there’s a beauty in listening to an album and there’s something special about it so. Anything that’s beautiful or special, it always comes back around when people lose sight of it, it’ll come back and be like, oh, that’s amazing, it’s like it’s the first time.

mxdwn: Well, you guys are in on that. You guys do a lot of vinyl releases and stuff and I think you know Jack White has, I think, a lot of modern groups that are throwbacks.

CB: There is a yeah, they do. There’s a big resurgence in vinyl, which is great for us because that’s our favorite kind of medium to put things out on, especially for me as I did all of the artwork for the albums, and I like the bigger format artwork you know to really, really be able to hold it in your hands and maybe even touch it if it has like, you know, tangible feeling too. Yes, but I think vinyl’s having a resurgence right now, and that’s exciting. There’s a big vinyl community out there. Yeah, that’s always been major. I think that’s the best way to listen to music. There’s just something special about the vinyl as opposed to CD or tape or any other kind of medium media.

mxdwn: Yeah, and you’re so into the tech stuff I’ve seen. Like all your gadget interviews and you’ve got like the board everywhere around you and all this stuff.

CB: Oh, yeah yeah yeah.

mxdwn: Vinyl helps and that too helps bring it out. And helps the listener see it or hear it.

CB: Yeah, yeah it does. I mean, we’re all into our old vintage pedals and I think stuff was made better back. And like our amps are 1960s amps and I think things were made by hand, so instead of like stamps and a machine. Vinyl follows in line with that kind of mentality of using older amplifiers and stuff and might as well use it.

mxdwn: Well, it kind of speaks to your craftsmanship. I think it’s very holistic, you know.

CB: Yeah, it’s where we like the organic approach. We don’t like forcing anything and we like it, you know, analog and a lot more. We like things to be more human based instead of this digital sterile age that we’re embarking upon.

mxdwn: This latest album, Wilderness of Mirrors is good. There’s a lot of songs on it and Alex and Stephanie were in the interview, and they said that it was better received post COVID than maybe a few years ago. What are your thoughts on that, is it?

CB: What do you mean? Like it was better received, better that we released it after?

mxdwn: Yeah, after COVID, after everyone’s kind of been through that COVID experience, it really kind of touches on a lot of feelings that COVID brought out.

CB: Yeah, it does. The themes of the Black Angels have always been paranoia. Like every album, every album deals with that and it, I guess because of COVID people tie it into the album. So, the album would have started at the end of 2019, and it probably would have been out by the middle of 2020 had COVID not hit, but we didn’t want to put out an album that we weren’t going to be able to tour on. Touring is an important part of putting out an album because it just helps solidify the album better. People see you play it live, they can connect with the music, so we didn’t want to put it out and not tour so it marinated a bit more. We were recording in Austin, so we were able to go over to our friend’s house, record at our leisure. We didn’t have like a time restraint really and the album marinated in a really nice way. It wouldn’t have been 15 songs. It probably would have been 10 songs that have been put out in 2020, but it got an extra 5 because of COVID and waiting around and so we were able to develop five more songs more than there would have been, so those probably would have been on the next album. This was the longest between albums, five years, so that won’t happen again. We’ve got the songs ready. We have like 30 songs that we we’re working on, so this next album should come soon, maybe 2024.

mxdwn: You just answered like 3 of my other questions. That’s great, so I’m going to skip around. I was going to ask you if making an album this way turns out to be a success for you guys and the album. The music is great. Is it a process worth replicating? I mean you say you like to work fast. I mean, it would be hard to wait five years between albums.

CB: Yeah, that’s not normal for us. It won’t be that long for this one. I think the follow up to this one, it’s there. Well, there’s, like I said, probably about 10 songs that have already been started, they just weren’t far enough along to put on an album. So that process will begin after we tour this Wilderness of Mirrors for a bit, which will be, you know, at least half of 2023, most of 2023 will be dedicated to Wilderness. But we are always creative and have ideas going and bubbling, so I think by 2024, the beginning of 2024, we’d start figuring out what songs will be on the next album.

mxdwn: Will you play some of those songs on the tour before they’ve been released to kind of see how they feel?

CB: Yeah, we love to do that. Alex especially loves to come up with a new idea to play live. It’s exciting to play it live, you know? It’s a fresh idea.

mxdwn: And everybody’s like, what is that?

CB: Yeah, we love to do that. That’s how we’ve always worked when we’re on tour, we jam stuff during the soundcheck and then try to whip it up into shape enough to play it live. So, maybe.

mxdwn: I totally get it as a writer, the whole marination thing like a chef. It just kind of deepens and maybe when you look at a song a day or two, or a month later, it has taken on a different meaning or a life of its own in a way.

CB: Yeah, yeah it does, I think it’s important as an artist to, I also am a graphic designer, and like I must let things sit for a little bit. I do posters. But the same with songs, we don’t like to rush them too much. You let them sit and then revisit them and I think that’s a better way of, or, that’s the way we prefer to do it. Letting things marinate, and see where they go organically, not forcing it, so yeah. We never forced anything. I remember this is a funny story but one Christmas in 1984 I opened a gift and broke it immediately and I’ll never forget what my mom said. You forced it, you forced. But all through my life, it’s always been a theme of mine. Don’t force anything, just let it happen, you know.

mxdwn: This leads me to my next question. In an interview I’ve read, in many of the interviews I’ve seen, all you guys are irreverent, you speak in metaphors, the answers are sometimes entirely elusive, totally hilarious. I’ve read an interview where a guy asks you what the band does 15 minutes before a show and 15 minutes after and the answer was “We whip each other with chains 15 minutes before the show and we whip each other with chains 15 minutes after the show” and he wrote it down.

CB: Yeah, well, I mean. You know? If you’re gonna ask something like that.

mxdwn: It’s a lively show.

CB: Yeah, that always helps us get ready. For the show.

mxdwn: Good to know. Yeah, so it’s intentional. You guys are crazy, I like it. So, a couple more questions. I really wanted to ask you about, and I’ve seen you guys and I’ve really been down the rabbit hole with your interviews and almost all of you to a person will say you don’t have parameters, but you do have kind of meter type things and is that just self-awareness? You guys are growing or you’re learning to say no to ideas. You kind of know if it’s going to work or not.

CB: Yeah, we all draw from the same kind of influences so it’s easy to work with these cooks in the kitchen, you know, because we come from the same place. And we all are into pretty much the same kind of music. So, if somebody doesn’t bring something in it we’re like, what are you doing? You know, out of left field. If they do, we’re usually like man you are pulling a prank on us or something, but no, we really get along creatively. We know how to work with each other. We’ve been a band almost 20 years, which is hard to believe. The last 20 years flew by, I’ll tell you. But yeah, Alex, Stephanie and I are the original three members that are still in the band, but Jake and Ramiro that have joined in and they fall right in line with everything that we’re into. I mean, there’s a foundation of 60s music, I guess that we are drawn to. In my opinion there was like, having studied graphic design and art direction and advertising in school, in the 60s there was a creative revolution in advertising and in the art world. And in the music world. And we tried it. We tap into that. I mean, I don’t think you get much better than The Beatles, and they’re, you know, like I mean, that’s the most famous band ever, so modeling our ourselves off them is kind of, you know, that’s a part of the blueprint.

mxdwn: You know, I started listening to the new album and almost song after song I went back to Spotify. I’m like, wait a minute is this The Black Angels? I was like, it sounds like Dick Dale and the Deltones or like Jan and Dean  on steroids or something.

CB: Yeah, yeah we explored a lot of territory I mean, Sgt. Pepper’s, for me, was a very big album that I discovered in my dad’s collection when I was about nine years. I would listen to it and stare at the cover. It’s a big album for me, just the places that that went. I mean, it’s very dynamic. It’s a rollercoaster ride. The songs you know from “When I’m Sixty-Four” to “Within You Without You” like the Indian kind of style. They go all over the place, and this album, we were exploring different territory we have a lot of different inspirations from Jesus and Mary Chain and Spacemen 3 to The Zombies and The Kinks. You know it’s all over the place.

mxdwn: Speaking of going all over the place I was looking at the two songs “El Jardin” and “La Pared” which literally mean the garden and the wall.

CB: We’re having fun exploring. Yeah, yeah.

mxdwn: Are their native Spanish speakers in the band, and is there some meaning there? With those two titles.

CB: Well, Ramiro speaks Spanish fluently. It’s funny, Alex and I grew up together in Seabrook, Texas and there was a neighborhood called El Jardin where all the bad kids used to live, and so we will call this song “El Jardin”, but it has more meaning than just that. It’s also about, like the Garden of Eden being destroyed.

mxdwn: I totally pick up on some of the good and the bad.

CB: Yes, there’s constant battle between good and evil, and that’s another theme that our music takes on.

mxdwn: So, a couple more here. I wanted to ask “Without a Trace” is just aesthetically impressive now knowing your art and graphic design. How involved was the band? Did you guys choose the color scheme? The visuals? And how was that structured?

CB: Yeah, yeah.

mxdwn: It was cool. It keeps your attention.

CB: Good good, so I’m hoping for that. I usually design the albums while we’re recording, so I’m like listening while designing so they all go together.

mxdwn: It’s kind of the music leading the art? And maybe if you draw something then the art kind of leads something there?

CB: Yeah. Visual and audio for us have always been equal. That’s why, like in our live shows, we always have visuals as well, so we like to immerse people in our world. You know that we’re bringing to the table.

mxdwn: That’s, you know, as a chef I always say half the meal is eaten with the eye, and I think it goes true for musicians too. Half the song is theme.

CB: Yeah, a lot of the time our music will be like, we picture a visual scenario. I mean like – I don’t know. Picture yourself walking through the jungle on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and try to create an audio feeling of that, you know, like Alex and I would use to watch Apocalypse Now on mute and just sit there with a bass and guitar and like creating the moment.

mxdwn: That’s cool, last question for you. I think you guys know the psych rock genre, a lot of the artists talk about using the studio itself as an instrument, but I’m wondering if you guys take it beyond that to use the genre as an instrument as well. Because “The River” has very intense lyrics, but then the melodic sound and the opening throw you off and then these lyrics kind of come at you. And then, by contrast, “100 Flowers of Paracusia”, which is my new favorite song, is so catchy, it’s like a 60s pop song. It’s like this little breezy song and you’re listening and that’s like “The River” lyrics and this are on the same album.

CB: Yeah, I mean, I like that. So Pink Floyd’s first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is another inspiration for that kind of thing to where there are short little acoustic numbers and then there’s this song “Interstellar Overdrive.” It’s like a 10-minute-long outer space journey instrumental, and then it goes back to a song that’s like about a gnome or a scarecrow. I mean, life is filled with so many twists and turns. That’s kind of what we like to represent on our albums. Each album is a chapter of life that we’ve gone through and we’re relating back to the good times, the bad times and just observing what’s going on. You know, it’s really what our albums are like we’re just messengers reporting our observations on the world and trying to make sense of it. And how does that relate with the listener?

mxdwn: I think Alex, the way he kind of warbles and wobbles his voice through some of these songs, it’s very dramatic. It’s almost like pulling things out of you with your brain a little bit like, well, I didn’t know I had that feeling up there.

CB: Yeah, that’s awesome. I wish he could hear you say that. `

mxdwn: Well, maybe we’ll interview him next.

CB: He would love that. Yeah, yeah you should.

mxdwn: Let’s say to you it’s been a pleasure. I mean, I’m a new fan and yeah, you guys, you’re intelligent. Which I think is a big part, you know, I grew up in the 80s, so it was all the hair bands, and it was sex, drugs and rock’n’roll but we’re older now. It’s like, you know, half that stuff doesn’t work anymore.

CB: Thank you very much. Learn from the past.

mxdwn: So, I mean you guys are really on a roll. Do you guys have a few more albums in you?

CB: Yeah, this train is the train that is rolling. So, we’re on board.

mxdwn: Good.

CB: We’re going with it, yeah, going with the momentum. We feel creative. We all get along with each other. It’s our formula. We moved in together when we were starting the band and we got to be a family and so we all get along with each other really well. Alex and I were best friends growing up. I’ve known him since I was 13 and he was eleven, so that’s a pretty strong foundation. Onward we go.

mxdwn: That’s really, that’s a special relationship.

CB: Yeah, it is. It really is. Yeah, it’s awesome.

mxdwn: And you guys, your families individually have grown. Do you have kids?

CB: Alex has kids. Alex is married, has two kids. Two young kids.

mxdwn: So, you’re starting to see some life happening. Life circumstances with the band as well.

CB: Yeah, yeah. We’ve stayed strong throughout and creative. Nothing is hindered, so yeah, it’s been good.

mxdwn: Are you excited about touring?

CB: I am, we’re going to Europe in January. First time in about six years.

mxdwn: I saw that.

CB: It’s gonna be great. I’m looking forward to that, yeah?

mxdwn: All right, continued success. Congratulations on it.

CB: Thank you. Appreciate that, Ric. Good talking.

Featured Image Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat