Black Moth Super Rainbow, Eating Us

By Noreen Sobczyk

When you visit the Black Moth Super Rainbow website, you’ll find that their new album Eating Us is available in a limited “hairy summer jacket” version. Well if that doesn’t say it all, what does? Hopefully this review will help elaborate on this, at least a bit, because a lot of the beauty of Black Moth Super Rainbow is that the music must be experienced and can’t be fully explained in text. Does that sound pretentious? It’s not, I promise. Take a tab of BMSR and you’re guaranteed not to have a bad trip.

This record opens with live drums and a harpsichord-sounding, Partridge Family-melded-with-Three-Dog-Night riff. And if that sounds bad, well consider that my fault, because it’s a whole serving of good. The layered electronic voice, standard to BMSR, is present on almost every song, but not in a Cher “Believe” kind of way. It’s really the vocal effects that keep this firmly in the land of electronic, because BMSR are so warm and welcoming that you’ll almost forget it’s electronic music. Heck, they even use an acoustic guitar.

Psychedelia abounds with music conveying cascading images of flowers, lollipops, and sunshine. Their song “The Sticky” has the lyrics, “You and me/we’re going to melt away/like apples in the ground.” I don’t know what that means, but I like it. You’ll no doubt have your own personal slide show of images to go with these songs. Titles such as “Iron Lemonade”, and “The Fields Are Breathing” sum up the music in and of themselves. So what do you need me for, huh?

This is tripped out free flowing electronic music, (complete with some “la la la’s”), for people who don’t necessarily like electronic music. Live drum beats mix with electronic beats and analog sounds swirl in a dizzy haze punctuated by musical strobe lights. This is music that elicits, no, oozes imagery and emotion. And, oh yeah, it’s fucking genius. Lacking all of the sterility one might associate with electronica, many of the melodies create a lilting feeling of dandelion fuzz floating on the summer wind, but those tufts taste sweet like cotton candy. Listening to Eating Us is the closest many people may come to experiencing synesthesia. Eat their music. Smell the grooves. Buy this record.

Eating Us came down fast on May 26. The band plays at The Mohawk in Austin TX on June 2. To hear the band’s music and to find out about more tour dates, visit Black Moth Super Rainbow’s MySpace page.