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Evangelicals

Steamboat Springs — "The Evening Descends"

Evangelicals makes found sounds lovely. That's a basic and incredibly vague description, but it's the most accurate for Evangelicals, a slightly oddball indie-psych trio from Oklahoma.

With "The Evening Descends," lead songwriter Josh Jones establishes his out-of-the-mainline sound by tiredly speaking when he's not tiredly singing. That's layered over swelling synth melodies and simple, dance-y beats to create a set of songs that flow into and out of each other, making a sound that is sometimes uncomfortable but always uniform.

Evangelicals gets its consistency the same way many bands with a distinctive sound do - this isn't three guys playing together equally; it's Josh Jones and his supporting cast. When the songwriter is flawed, that formula can't do much but fail. On "The Evening Descends," the songwriter is flawed - but only in beautiful ways.

His quirks mean unsettling distortion on "Skeleton Man," talking to himself on "Midnight Vignette" and tinkering bells behind lyrics about giving up in "Paperback Suicide." Then there's the theatric centerpiece "Party Crashin'," with its classic acoustic guitar picking and sweeping Arcade Fire choruses.

Those elements are staples in breaking Evangelicals away from obvious sound comparisons such as The Flaming Lips or The Cure (they do seem subconsciously sad), and they're the main achievement on "The Evening Descends."

Rating: ''''

Monade

"Monstre Cosmic"

Monade sounds exactly like Stereolab. That makes sense, of course, because Monade essentially is Stereolab - with most of its calming French ambience coming from Stereolab co-leader Laetitia Sadier.

With either group, you're looking mostly at atmospheric Euro-pop, sung half in French, half in English. It's pieced together with a traditional band format, relying on rock guitars behind ballad bass lines on which to float its dreamy qualities.

None of that makes for an especially dynamic album, but that's clearly not what Sadier, Stereolab or Monade are after. "Monstre Cosmic" is more of the same for Stereolab fans, and probably isn't worth the listen for everyone else.

Rating: ''