Archer Black

Archer Black is the brainchild of composer and songwriter Dustin Morgan. Together, he and his nine companions make for a fascinating experience with their debut LP, Forgiveness Is A Weapon. The disc opens with the tribal drums and yells of “Addiction Is A Trigger Puller I” and as they crescendo, Morgan hops in with trippy vocals accompanied by outrageous drums.

The beginning of the album features a lot of that eerie ambiance. With the trip that is “Addiction Is A Trigger Puller I” as well as the haunting backing vocals of “The Bomb,” and surrealism of the album’s namesake, “Forgiveness Is A Weapon,” you might think that you get a good sense of what the album’s all about.

That’s not the case, however, as much of the album is beautifully composed. Despite the four or five songs that resemble dirges, “The Sounding” is beautiful and the blaring trumpets pave the way for a funky beat in “The Lost War,” and the violins take the spotlight in this album’s best track, the instrumental “Game Vs. Real.”

The first three quarters of the album is great, regardless of its depressing overtones. “Onward And Down” is the only speed bump on Forgiveness Is A Weapon. Morgan’s vocals are somewhat whiny. Not even the trumpets can save this one. Similarly, “Bayonets” opens with an interesting beat, but slowly turns out sounding like another dirge at the end. The fantastic “Port Of Call” is the only example of tone change on the disc, sounding both triumphant and happy. It’s a refreshing change of pace.

Forgiveness Is A Weapon utilizes many different musical aspects and instruments, ranging from the dark and dreary to the psychedelic to the surreal. The instrumentation on this disc is excellent, but Morgan’s whiny vocals and shrieks really need some refinement in some instances.

In A Word: Somber - The Aquarian Weekly

You’re not dreaming. You are inside a song. It is transplanting you to a place. Inside. Into the catacombs, not Dante’s Inferno deep. But far enough to leave you curious. You poke your finger into this light and siphon breathlessly. Like me your desire is to hear more of Archer Black and their beautifully rendered song “Onward And Down” is just the beginning. Peace. - Mitten Mouth Music

I spent a lot of my childhood riding around in my mom’s ’78 Camaro. She had the Footloose soundtrack on cassette and she wore that thing out. I didn’t know who Kevin Bacon was, but by the time I was eight I knew all the words to “Holding Out for a Hero.” Of course, Mom told me that “Dancing in the Sheets” was actually “Dancing in the Streets.” I guess she figured dancing in the street would be safer than the sheets.
Whenever we took a break from the 80’s dance grooves, it was all top 40 hits of the 50’s and 60’s on the radio. The Temptations, Ray Charles; imagine, an 8-year-old kid running around the house, singing Chuck Berry. That was me. Then, in December, 1987, something happened. Permanent Vacation.
My teenage cousin was the coolest. Cool in the way only a teenager, seen through the eyes of an eight year old, can be. For Christmas that year he gave me a cassette of Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation. I knew it was legit because he just handed it to me, no wrapping paper, just a casual “Merry Christmas.” Finally, I had something that was my own. It’s funny, looking back on tracks like “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” or “Rag Doll” I can’t imagine what my eight year old self thought those songs were about. What I do remember, is the sound of that wailing voice and drums like thunder. I wore that thing out in my little yellow boom box.

Of course this was just the beginning, but from that point on, music became something more. Independence, rebellion, identity. There’s nothing quite like finishing a shouting match with my brother by slamming the bedroom door and cranking up noisiest, most radical music I could get my hands on. As the years passed, I left behind Aerosmith and countless other bands. Devouring album after album, trying to find something to make everyone roll their eyes, or cringe, or possibly fear for my sanity, I turned music from a full-time hobby into an obsession. My two closest friends and I would spend every weekend afternoon skating to the local record shop, staring at the album artwork, talking to the older kids about what was good, and making lists of what we would eventually buy.
Eventually I did start to understand music as something more than rebellion, but that first record and the following years left an unalterable impression on everything I consider creative. At some point, every artist has had to say, “Fuck You, that’s not how I’m going to do it.” Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, even that 80’s dance music my mom loved so much came from somebody rebelling against something. Creative minds keep moving the line. But I digress.
The point is, first loves are the ones you never forget. No matter how silly or embarrassing they may be, those first feelings run deep. And though the line drawn from the first to last may not be straight, the origin can never change. Somewhere, that stuff affects you. Sometimes so deeply and completely that you don’t even notice. - Ardent Studios Music Blog

“…I set out to break all the rules, and then write new ones and then break them all again.”

Los Angeles-based band, Archer Black, is the brainchild of the composer Dustin Morgan, also a classically trained musician at California State University of Northridge. Comprised of eleven members, they collectively take you from Black Sabbath to Bjork and from Steve Reich to Steve Albini, all within a matter of minutes. Such disparate influences might seem inharmonious at best, but in this case, they forge a moody musical rhapsody that sets them in a category of their own. Post Planetary Records will release the band’s debut album, Forgiveness Is A Weapon, on February 7.

Forgiveness Is A Weapon may sound like a political statement, but the real concept is far from that. “I did not intentionally set out to write an entire record of songs about war. In fact, none of the songs are really about war. Really, the record is made up of love songs.” Citing the song, “The Bomb,” Morgan clarifies that the tune is actually about when two become so wrapped up emotionally, it’s essentially an arms race where either one of you have your finger on the button and can destroy each other. That’s what makes it beautiful. This is really just a reflection of the time. It’s part of the reality right now. The imagery I use is taken from the reality I live in.”

The initial songwriting for the band began in 2008 while the recording began in 2009, but it wasn’t until three years later that Forgiveness Is A Weapon finally came into fruition. The reason for the delay was a combination of scheduling conflicts between the eleven members and slow and steady fine tuning that Morgan patiently detailed in order to create the ideal work.

“One thing I’ve learned from working in the studio with other people is that you can’t compromise. Twenty years from now, you won’t remember that this took you six months to do extra vocals, but you will remember if there’s something you don’t like,” explains Morgan.

The vision for Archer Black became clear to Morgan when he began studying with Victor Vanacore, orchestrator and arranger for Ray Charles and Johnny Mathis among others. As Morgan began arranging his music for strings and brass, the music became a compulsion. “My original intention was to learn how to orchestrate for film,” says the lead singer, “But after getting deeper into what Vic does, I got the idea to do a pop record that included a large ensemble.”

Morgan set out to create music in modern form, but with the soul and beauty of the past, allowing the compositions, not the instrumentation to define the music as modern. In order to achieve that feat, he formed the collective Archer Black. At first thought it seemed hard to have almost a dozen talented people with creative ideas joining together to come up with one cohesive and impressive sound. Morgan explained that in this case, the band was more like a ship and crew.

“I put the notes in front of them [his band] to play, but they are all people that I respect and who respect me so there have been lots of opportunities to voice their opinion. There’s no way to throw 11 people on stage without having someone steering the ship,” says Captain Morgan, –no pun intended- “The great thing is that they’re not going to let me run into an iceberg just because I want to.”

The main conflict was obviously to marry the classical orchestral sound with that of a modern rock band.

“When I started writing this music, I kind of set out to not have any rules. Better yet, I set out to break all the rules, and then write new ones and then break them all again. In the past, I’ve always felt restrained by the rock band format,” explains long time bassist of The Autumns. “I think, ‘well it will never come across live, or we can’t put it on a record ‘cause how would that be performed?’”

Recently it’s become a trend to throw in strings in a rock band with the hope of creating an authentic sound. Morgan understan - Campus Circle

If you like: The Autumns, Nick Cave, odd un-pop orchestral rock.

I’d like to preface this review by saying that I am a die-hard fan of The Autumns, the band that Dustin Morgan, songwriter and composer of Archer Black, played bass for. Many of the other Young Folks know this, and I could, and have, talked for hours about that band. I bought this album knowing that I would try very hard to like it. This, inevitably, colours my review, however I shall endeavour to let the album’s merits show for their own sake.

From the very start of the first song on the album, Forgiveness Is A Weapon, two things become very clear. Firstly, this is not an album that will ever win pop awards or become a part of the mainstream musical taste. Secondly, this is exactly the sort of music that should win those awards. With Morgan’s high, lilting voice singing ever-so-slightly strange melodies, and the orchestral string and brass accompaniment to the rock-song-gone-alternative arrangements, this is not a typical collection of songs written to please fans. No, this is an oh so carefully put together album, each song leading seamlessly to the next, filling the listeners ears almost completely.

In a normal review, here is where I would point to two or three songs that strike me, and attempt to detail how those songs are so effective, however while those songs certainly exist, I feel like listening to the album not as a whole would let it down. There are common threads throughout every song that tie it together; the strings certainly, the slow but groove-influenced drums for sure, the blend of the not-overpowering bass and softly stirring guitars as a definite, and the lyrical content of war, peace and chaos painting no pictures, instead trying to describe an emotion, or a feeling.

It is these trends of the album, more than anything else, that appeals to me. On first listen, I was a little unnerved by how little traditional catchy music was present. Now though, after a few more listens, I’m finding that these are not the songs that get stuck in my head, this is the album that I want to hear again, start to finish. Which I’ve done. Three times today.

Final Thoughts: Bumper sticker is now on my car. - Young Folks Music

Without dwelling too much on the past – Archer Black (real name: Dustin Morgan) is the bass player of The Autumns, a group known for their post rock infused indie (oh dear me and my genre branding). Naturally I expected more or less the same thing.

Boy was I wrong!

Opener, Addiction is a Trigger Puller I, literally kicks off with tribal chanting, huge drums and enough verve and vitality to make your head spin with delight.

Another thing which took me by surprise is just how orchestral this album is. Black just piles the horns, violins and trumpets like some wedding cake, and yet this never spoils the mix. Normally I would be put off by something like this, as usually too much pomp could disguise the lack of songs, but there are melodies aplenty.

I mean just to single out a song would be a task akin to the ones Hercules had to undertake … The Mournful Game vs real?; the Slinky The Sounding, the twinkly Port of Call? Each track paints a technicolour picture that stays etched in your mind long after the song has finished, and Morgan’s voice is in sync with the music. If upbeat he’ll be yelping for joy, if morose then it mutates into something mopey. Oh, and single Onward and Down is the song that Beirut never wrote …

Forgiveness is a Weapon has got the musical complexity of a Microphones album and the elegance of a Devotchka one, and still sounds like nothing else that’s happening at the moment. It’s a rewarding listening experience that effects all the senses. It’s the sound of one little guy making big gigantic music and succeeding. This is a giant of a record and one that will stomp on anything in it’s way. Mind you it will probably apologise if it does kill a person accidentally. - Stagedive Malta

(Post Planetary) I would probably buy a cologne or pep pill or firecracker or comic book called Black Archer. But you should buy a CD that makes the Pixies sound like musically timid pussies by a band called Archer Black. - Roctober

Archer Black is the sound of all hell breaking loose — references to wars, bombs, triggers, guns, bayonets and other manner of ordnance all surface amid the orchestral rock on the Los Angeles band’s debut album “Forgiveness Is a Weapon” (due Jan. 3). Frontman Dustin Morgan, the longtime bassist in L.A.’s moody shoegazers the Autumns, insists, though, the album is more about relationships, and while pop mythology does hold that love is a battlefield, it’s impossible not to visualize carnage on Archer Black’s cinematic excursions. Morgan, who has played with jazz notables Eldad Tarmu and Benny Golbinand and studied under composer Victor Vanacore, has teamed up with talented multi-instrumentalist Paul Cartwright (Tandemoro, et. al.), Autumns bandmates Madison Megna and Steve Elkins and violinist Jen Thomas to fashion an album with a post-rock sensibility and a chamber orchestra’s mettle. Scott Cronan’s gorgeous video for “Onward and Down” features actor Luke Barnett and Thomas … Radiohead, with strings and horns. Or Archer Black, heart aching, in the rockets’ red glare. - buzzbands.la