CD Review: Eating Us (BMSR)

Band: Black Moth Super Rainbow
Release: 2009

Comments: A more electronic Dandy Warhols. Certainly like DW, BMSR relies on psychedelia and atmosphere as its principle recording components. On a track like "Twin Of Myself," I'm not even afraid to make a comparison to Fuck Buttons, a musically harsher/heavier inferior. But to say that they are similar to the likes of Animal Collective -- that's a stress. The experimental component hardly shines through on this album. The vocoder never gets old on this album. Its presence creates a spacey, abundantly ambient environment -- not exactly like a High Places jungle nor a Galaxie 500 cloud. I got a little bored with "Iron Lemonade," but that's kind of expected when the same words are repeated ad nauseum. The cleanliness of the beats is impressive all-around on this album. Call it flawless musical engineering or just a flat out awesome recording process. A change-up comes in the form of "Smile The Day After Today." The band decided it was time to cut the synths (at least for one minute) in exchange for a more folksy/dream-pop overlay. The whole no vocals for once is cool. I like the sound engineering in the next track, "The Sticky". There is some left-right speaker craziness. "Bubblegum Animals" is just kind of meh. It's not really anything new or earth-shattering that separates it from the previous nine songs. "American Face Dust," now we are talking! A lot of great instruments going playing at once. If done well, a song becomes just that much better. This one is done superbly well. Perfect for an indie/low budget high school film. WHS TV 15 take note. The album finishes off with "Untitled," a mellow instrumental. Overall, I'm impressed by what Black Moth Super Rainbow has done! I can't really reference any of their prior work because I'm a neophyte listener, but for this one I was stimulated.

Grade: 8.7 out of 10