It’s a gloomy start to 2022’s final thirty-nine steps. And in embracing the wintertime blues, it’s the perfect time to indulge in a hazy, understated, all-lowercase aesthetic. Which, here in Austin, brings us to on being an angel. For the past three years this quartet sewn seeds of pop melodies across faint fields of fuzz and gritty landscapes of ’90s-style grunge. With an outspoken preference for the tried-and-true analogue sound over its precocious DAW descendants, the latest milestone in on being an angel’s ongoing mid-fi mission is on being a tape vol. ii.
Issued last Friday, on being a tape is a beautifully-flawed four-track whose heart’ll never need any digital clarity to move you. The EP wraps up with an inventive Lucinda Williams cover, but perhaps its biggest standout is the record’s penultimate track and final original. For a fully immersive analogue-and-fisheye experience, “brit boy” begs to be enjoyed alongside its black-and-white VHS-style music video. If that’s not enough, you might even be able to see on being an angel in-person, opening for The Lemonheads, Bass Drum of Death, and Juliana Hatfield on tour over the next month!
