Exclusive Video Premiere: The Black Angels “Telephone”

Premiere: Watch The Black Angels play the "Telephone" game.

The video for this song “Telephone,” by one of my favorite Austin psyche outfits, The Black Angels, was inspired by an old legend about a disastrous miscommunication in the trenches of WWI. The tale goes that the British were sending a message down the lines — an order for the troops to get out and reinforce an attack that was underway. “The Colonel said, ‘Send for reinforcements we are going to advance,’” Christian Bland (guitarist/vocalist) explains. But “by the time it got to the end of the line, the message was ‘Send three & four pence we are going to dance,’ so they never got the message, and the troops were slaughtered.”

We don’t know what message the band is relaying down the line in here in the video, but Bland suggests it might have something to do with a message written on the inside of the LP, “We encourage you to rethink your preconceived notions, question authority, and create other methods for survival.”

The new Black Angels album, “Phosphene Dream,” comes out tomorrow, 9/14 on the resurrected Blue Horizon Records.

Watch: The Black Angels blow Paul Shaffer’s mind apart on Letterman.

Live performances from The Black Angels on IFC; “You on the Run,” and “Black Grease.”