Black Moth Super Rainbow delivers a trippy dose of the same old same old:
What You Get If You Mix Robots, Psychedelic Drugs, and A Summer Afternoon
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Eating Us
Released on May 26, 2009
Originally, I never thought that the sounds I would expect out of a hallucinating R2-D2 would be enjoyable at all, but Black Moth Super Rainbow’s Eating Us, came closer than expected to disproving that notion. As catchy as it is fuzzy, synth laden, and ridiculously effects ridden, I can’t help but feel that this effort seemed to lack much real effort. Searching through the album all I could find were short glimmers of distinctively different sounds, the rest of the album hazing into a single insipid demonstration.
Hazy, psychedelic, wooly, melancholic, melodic, gloomy, distorted, dragging, repetitive, lethargic, danceable, ambient, cluster-fucked, trippy, and poppy all came to mind as accurate ways to describe the Pittsburg quintet’s fourth studio album. With nearly undecipherable lyrics blanketed by layer upon layer of vocoded goodness, the real meaning of Eating Us probably won’t be found in any lyrical booklet. While their sound is engaging and fun at times, I just couldn’t be moved by their lulling sound.
The first track, “Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise,” is a playful song packed with effected drums, vocoded vocals, melodic transitions, and epic synth movements. Moving on, “Twin of Myself,” which was one of my favorite songs on the album, has a much slower, less chaotic pace than most of the other songs. While it lacks some of the poppy flair of other songs, it makes up for this with its relaxing disposition.
“Tooth Decay” is the obnoxious, annoying low point of the album. With its unmovable attempt at a danceable beat, it just comes off as repetitive and crass. The song just has no intended direction and is essentially a shot in the dark at nothing. All it leaves me with is the mystery of whether they were trying too hard, or just being lazy, because it surely wasn’t a healthy compromise of both.
There are a few other redeeming songs to Eating Us though, one of those being “Smile the Day After Today.” Unlike most of their other material, it is light, airy, and even devoid of their usually harsh effects. It flows nicely into the following track, “The Sticky,” which only proceeds to up the tempo and add vocals.
Although their music is interesting and complex, it just rolls out like some sort of ADHD attempt at a recreating a classic painting. There are splashes of musical paint all over the damn thing, but I still can’t figure what they were trying to go for. The songs are full of loose-ended melodies, and while they were all decent, they never had a chance to develop before they were trashed for something completely different. At times they had a good start but couldn’t seem to take them anywhere, so they just filled in all the extra space with their usual distorted, repetitive interplay.
High Point
“Bubblegum Animals,” while repetitive, was relaxing, fun and simple. It was a nice break away from their usual style.
Low Point
This album had so many sweet hooks and melodies, but just never took them anywhere or completely wore them out. That was discouraging.
Posted by Andrew Scott on Jun 05, 2009 @ 6:30 am