Angels & Queens (2023)
Faith, flesh, and the weight of a voice
By Rafi Mercer
There are albums that arrive quietly, and then there are albums that enter the room.
Angels & Queens, by Gabriels, does the latter. It doesn’t ask for attention — it commands it. From the first moment Jacob Lusk opens his mouth, the air changes. You feel it in the chest, not the ears. This is not background music. This is music that insists on being faced.
Released in its complete form in 2023 — after arriving initially in two chapters — Angels & Queens feels less like a debut album and more like a statement of belief. Belief in the voice as an instrument of truth. Belief in soul music not as nostalgia, but as a living, breathing language for now.
Jacob Lusk’s voice is the axis everything turns on. It is enormous, but never careless. Gospel-trained, yes — but not locked into church walls. There is ache here. Theatre. Vulnerability. He sings like someone who has lived inside the songs before ever recording them. When he reaches upward, it isn’t for spectacle; it’s for release. When he pulls back, it’s to let the words land heavier.
What Gabriels do so well — and what separates them from revivalist soul acts — is their understanding of space. The arrangements are rich but controlled. Strings swell and retreat. Percussion arrives like a heartbeat, not a battering ram. You can hear the modern hand of producers Ari Balouzian and Ryan Hope, and the influence of Sounwave’s restraint: nothing is overplayed, nothing overstays. The album breathes. It gives the voice room to be human.
Thematically, Angels & Queens sits in the tension between the sacred and the profane — between who we are and who we wish we could be. Love is present, but rarely uncomplicated. Faith is here too, but not as dogma. This is belief tested by real life. Songs like “Taboo” and “If You Only Knew” explore desire, shame, and confession with a kind of emotional honesty that modern pop often avoids. There’s no neat resolution offered. Just truth.
What’s striking is how timeless the record feels without ever sounding dated. You hear echoes of Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, early Prince — but they pass through Gabriels rather than sit on top of them. This isn’t retro soul cosplay. It’s continuation. The lineage is respected, not replicated. You’re aware of history, but you’re never trapped in it.
There’s also a cinematic quality to the album. Many of these songs feel built for rooms — listening rooms, dim bars, solitary evenings where the lights are low and the day has finally stopped asking things of you. This is where Angels & Queens excels. It rewards attention. Play it quietly and it pulls you closer. Play it loud and it doesn’t break — it expands.
The decision to release the album in two parts initially now makes sense in retrospect. This is a long listen, emotionally and musically. It asks for patience. But patience here is repaid with depth. By the time the final tracks arrive, you feel as though you’ve travelled with the record rather than simply heard it. It leaves residue — not hooks stuck in your head, but feelings that linger.
In a musical landscape obsessed with immediacy, Angels & Queens moves differently. It slows time. It asks you to sit with discomfort, beauty, contradiction. It reminds us that the human voice — unfiltered, un-rushed — is still one of the most powerful instruments we have.
This is not an album for algorithms.
It’s an album for evenings.
For stillness.
For listening with intent.
And perhaps that’s its quiet defiance: in 2023, Gabriels made a record that trusts the listener to meet it halfway.
Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters.
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