BLACK SWAN LANE – Dead Souls Collide

            (Wanderland/Eden)

Guitarist/singer Jack Sobel’s Atlanta group came into their own several LPs ago, and it’s been all audacious knockouts since. BSL release annual albums that are epic in scope yet full of beautiful post-punk power, and DSC surpasses even 2022’s Blind or 2021’s Hide in View. Their kinship with ’80s Incredibles The Chameleons goes beyond two Chams playing on older BSL LPs, or Sobel drumming for offshoot The Sun and the Moon at their only, 2008 U.S. gig: there’s  a post-Strange Times or  Heaven Up Here Bunnymen sweep and dark (not goth) textural tension in the standout, heck-of-an opener “The Covenant,” “The Sacrifice,” and the (Irish) Whipping-Boy-esque “Thorns.” These don’t dazzle in static-y shoegaze noise. They’re punchy, burble-bassed/based, guitar rockers that hold you in their grip, with glistening guitar effects effecting rainforest-atmospheric shadings, while the rock-solid rhythm section anchors pulsing gliders such as “Push Me Under” and “Under My Wings.” Haunting and ghostly-lovely, BSL are worth following where’er they go. (blackswanlane.com) Jack Rabid, The Big Take-Over Magazine