Making themselves known to a national audience by opening for The Flaming Lips and already slated as an opener for Aesop Rock this winter, Black Moth Super Rainbow latest release, Dandelion Gum, was lent to me by a friend. The psychedelic/drone-pop is repetitive and spaced out in all the right ways, but the jams never get in the way of the songwriting and hooks.
The band's instrumentation makes frequent use of an analog vocoder Fender Rhodes piano, a drum machine, and a Novatron - an electro-mechanical, polyphonic keyboard, used by the likes of The Zombies and early Pink Floyd. The spacey instrumentation leads to spacey songs, but the secret to Black Moth Super Rainbow is the 90's chill out down-tempo current that moves beneath the druggy riffage. The guitar sound owes as much to Donavan as the vocoder-drenched vocals owe to pioneering electronic musician Bruce Haack.
Not much of anything is known about these guys, other than the fact they come from Pittsburgh and they know some people who know people who have drugs. But the record label, Graveface, for this release is based in my city of residence, Toledo, Ohio so I do feel some sort of hometown pride I guess. Not really, but our town AAA baseball team did well last year.
Upon repeated listenings of this album, there is nothing left to listen to. Its songs lack what feels to be emotion with the vocoder/drum machine eliminating any real "human" feelings on the album. The lyrics are almost being read to you over the PA system at your high school gym. The tacky feeling of over-usage of technology as apposed to the inclusion of human emotion is probably an advantage for this band. The sound borders on The Unicorns pop jangle mixed to Kraftwerk drum kicks with Syd Barrett freak jams.
I wasn't sure what to think after listening to it the first time, maybe because I was listening to it while I was selling blood. So if you are heavily sedated due to "donating" blood plasma in order to pay for food or a downtown practice, this album definitely comes through. But if you spin this disc a few too many times, it rots your mind. I feel good about this album, but I also feel good walking away from it. Definitely check out the follow-up and if you dig Aesop Rock, you'll get a bonus if you see them live this year.
