Photo: Madeline Northway
When I was young the winds would lift me up and take me home
Whispering of the world and all the stars we’ll never know
Their love forever flows through me
Hailing from the scorching deserts of Austin, Texas, the mesmerizing dream pop quartet known as Temple of Angels heralds the release of their debut album, Endless Pursuit. This grand unveiling, conducted via Run For Cover Records, is earmarked for the summer day of July 14th. But for now, we are graced with a taste of what’s to come; an invigorating preview of the album with a brand new track titled breezy elegance, “Waving To The Wind.”
A note, a strum, a beat, and suddenly you are swept away into the realm of Temple of Angels, where the melody is teeming with euphoric vitality, where guitars chime and shimmer like stardust, creating a rhythm that pulses with enchantment. Amidst this sonic terrain, a voice emerges, that of the enchanting chanteuse Bre Morell. Her effervescent and radiant vocals rise like a lark at dawn, illuminating the vibrant melodies.
“Waving To The Wind” is a testament to the band’s songwriting prowess. Ethereal dreamscapes meet irresistible pop nuances, interlacing to create a bewitching blend of harmonies. It is an audacious exhibition of their ability to dip their brushes in the celestial hues of dreams and the vibrant colors of pop.
The video for “Waving To The Wind”, directed by Erynn Patrick Lamont, showcases the band against a series of stunning landscapes, as Morell periodically reflects upon life – literally, in a mirror. It’s a powerful clip that embodies a bittersweet whimsy.
Emerging in 2017 from the Texas punk and hardcore scene, Temple of Angels (Avery Burton (guitar/vocals), Patrick Todd (drums/vocals), and Cole Tucker (guitar) carved a niche for themselves with a grandiose sound palette that invoked echoes of Cocteau Twins, The Cure, and The Sundays. After recording a few demos, they recruited Bre Morell to be their lead singer. They’ve shared stages with Beach Fossils, Iceage, Narrow Head, and Turnover and appeared at festivals like Levitation and Not Dead Yet.
Endless Pursuit makes its grand entrance as a monolith of gothic elegance, declaring the band’s spotlit arrival on the contemporary stage. It reverberates with the spectral echoes of days gone by, blending them seamlessly with the awe-inspiring wonder of the now, encapsulating a radiant beacon of the dream pop genre at its most captivating zenith.
Endless Pursuit accentuates the disorienting whirlwind that trails in the wake of loss. The effervescence of the album belies the difficult circumstances that inspired it. While Temple of Angels started working on Endless Pursuit in 2020, the pandemic and Morell’s move to Los Angeles meant that the band wouldn’t start recording it until late 2021. In that in-between, separated from friends and partner, Morell began to fully process the loss of her mother in 2017.
“I started having extremely vivid nightmares reliving certain experiences with my mom that started to take over my life, trapping me in that trauma,” Morell explains.
Endless Pursuit‘s thematic backbone is woven with the spectral threads of dreams; dreams steeped in an unnerving sense of loss and displacement. They expose a haunting vacancy – the echoing absence of someone or something irreplaceable that once defined your very existence. These dreams amplify a dissonant reality where home has ceased to provide refuge, resonating instead with a hollow unfamiliarity. As the estranged world unveils itself, it creates a discordant rhythm that pulsates through every verse, capturing a pervasive sense that all isn’t as it should be in our own existential drama.
Endless Pursuit was recorded with Colin Knight (Death Bells, Fury, Leisure World) and Phillip Odom (Ceremony, Militarie Gun, Portrayal of Guilt) and then mastered by Will Yip (Turnover, Citizen, Title Fight). The album will be available on all streaming services and is available for pre-order here.
Catch Temple of Angels on their North American tour:
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