There’s a disgusting image that readily comes to mind every time a new piece of news about or music by Black Moth Super Rainbow comes out. The group has an affinity for candy (2007’s Dandelion Gum, “Lollipopsichord”, Bubblegum Animals), but the frontman’s stage name is Tobacco. It consistently conjures pictures of chewing gum bubbles popping and damp, dark brown chewing tobacco dripping out. To that end, Black and Rainbow mix together just about the same way. A blend of the fantastic and the grotesque. The music isn’t far off either. After every few layers of gloppy synth, there’s a moment of sugar overload, where things get to be a little too much, where something comes off the tracks. Sometimes this derailment is a positive, a new territory, and sometimes it’s a train wreck.

Eating Us, their first studio album (after recording, purportedly, in New England backwoods and on the sides of roads), is a clear departure sonically from their older records; this, at least to some degree, is the doing of producer Dave Fridmann, member of Mercury Rev and the man at the boards for The Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney’s The Woods, a couple of Mogwai’s records and more. On this record, those seemingly disparate reference points all find their way home. Mogwai’s lush, atmospheric style, the Lips anthemic nature and S-K’s rhythmic thump all linger somewhere underneath the vocoded vocals and heavily distorted instrumentation.

Whether it’s a kind of musical growth or Fridmann’s interest, there are some truly normal aspects of Eating Us. Album opener “Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise” works much the way a pop song would, which is something to note for BMSR. Plus, it features a string section (and not a synth string section, probably). “Gold Splatter”, beyond the slippery vocals, features acoustic guitars and what might just be actual drumming.

But, there’s a reason these dudes are on the iTunes Essentials: Vocoder. A good deal of the time it’s nearly (or completely) impossible to understand a word that Tobacco’s warbling. Even when the vocals are front and forward, the lyrics still aren’t exactly understandable in any sense of the word. “Eating seeds from the big black cloud above us/Let me be with the new twin of myself,” Tobacco croons in the aptly titled “Twin of Myself”.

The most easily accessible and acknowledgeable vocals don’t come in until “The Sticky”. Despite the upbeat live drums, buzzsaw synth and saccharine vocoder, the message is downright depressing. “You and me, we’re gonna melt away, like apples in the ground” Tobacco repeats, completely bereft of emotion, noticeably, even through the vocoder. Throughout this album and their previous ones, Black Moth Super Rainbow are rooted in the natural world, despite their love of obviously electronic sound sources. And these lyrics once again ground them there, in the biological, organic world that will melt and return to the ground.

But these brief flashes of depth are confounded by the loopy, surreal instrumentation and soundscapes. The insular, electronic, computerized music is determined to stay connected to nature, to the physical world, through its uncontrollable structures and lyrics. But, the derailments, the moments in which they lose any and all control of these pieces  keep Black Moth Super Rainbow from attaining anything more than a fun weirdness.

Rating:

Check Out:
“Twin of Myself”

Buy:
Eating Us

Categories: Album Reviews, Features
Tags: Black Moth Super Rainbow