My biggest disappointment at last year’s South by Southwest was
missing Black Moth Super Rainbow’s sets. Hustling to the Thirsty Nickel
for my last chance to catch them, I encountered a shut door. I could
see the band playing to a packed house in the corner of the
country-western-themed venue, but I couldn’t hear anything. The crowd’s
rapturous faces and movements rubbed salt in the wound, so I hastily
split the scene.
This was a bummer because Black Moth Super Rainbow have been making
some of the most enchanting psychedelic music of the past few years.
Dandelion Gum (2007) and the new Eating Us, in
particular, tint the stereo field a decidedly alluring hue of
tangerine, chartreuse, and mauve. The sound is naive and full of
wonder, surfeited in oddly glittering analog-synth textures that will
toll nostalgic bells for anyone who’s munched magic mushrooms to the
splendid emanations of Bruce Haack, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, and
Boards of Canada.
BMSR’s songs are concise and hooky, but peculiarly out of focus,
smeared into a hazier dimension via technology—and a
creator—that seems imbued with an otherworldly spirit. While
mastermind Tobacco swears drugs play no role in his creative process,
his lyrics abound with supernatural phenomena and synesthetic imagery.
“Lollipopsichord” off Dandelion Gum exemplifies this, perfectly
merging candy with instrument. You want to live in these songs,
which offer a vivid, fresh form of escapism.
But who are Black Moth Super Rainbow? The live band
metamorphosed out of Tobacco’s previous project,
satanstompingcaterpillars, in Pittsburgh in 2003. The members wear
their mystery shroud well. In an age of rampant fame whoredom and
internet-fabulous flashes in the motherboard, this quintet eschew band
photos (or ones that reveal their visages) and real names in favor of
awry-acid-trip artwork and whimsical monikers like Iffernaut, the Seven
Fields of Aphelion, Father Hummingbird, and Ryan Graveface. Power Pill
Fist sadly won’t be making the trip this tour.
Tobacco assures that BMSR’s “mystique” isn’t contrived. “I just
think it’s not important to talk about yourself, when it should be
about what we’re making,” he argues. “[The] mystique has been created
for us by everyone else. We don’t like showing our faces or talking
about ourselves, but don’t strive to be mysterious, either.”
Tobacco—the name, he says, derives “from a character that
freaked me out as a kid”—sings through a vocoder, adding yet
another layer of obfuscation to the enigma. (Note that Tobacco
essentially is Black Moth Super Rainbow in the studio; he uses a
band to realize his music in live settings.) Of course, all of this
aesthetic camouflage wouldn’t mean squat if BMSR’s music didn’t
resonate. And, man, does it resonate.
The most common impression that comes to mind while listening to
BMSR: It’s like Boards of Canada repeatedly remixing, with subtle
variations, the Beatles’ languid masterpiece “Strawberry Fields
Forever.” BOC’s predilection for analog-synths that willfully wobble
out of tune and melodies that trigger an unpinpointable wistfulness
seemingly has had a major impact on BMSR’s sound.
Electronic-
instrument inventor/genius Bruce Haack’s songs of
childlike awe and ominous sweetness color Tobacco’s aesthetic, too.
“I think Boards of Canada had a huge influence in the beginning, but
not at all anymore,” Tobacco asserts. “Maybe even too much of an
influence on a record like [2003’s] Falling Through a Field. I
could only do so much of that, though, and I think [my sound has]
strayed really far since. I’ve never heard Bruce Haack, but people
bring him up a lot.”
In BMSR’s music, a tension between dissolution—almost
everything sounds as if it’s melting and dissolving out of
focus—and an earthy funkiness exists. Apparently, this
paradoxical structure in their songs is simply a happy accident. “It’s
just me trying to get it to sound good to my ears,” Tobacco says.
Tobacco’s prominent use of vocoder lends his tunes a strange,
androgynous fragility. Unlike most singers, who try to sound less
human/more robotic with vocoders, Tobacco conveys more emotion
through its effects. “It’s just my best way of being able to sing,” he
shrugs. “I can make any melody I want without having to feel
uncomfortable in my own voice.”
You can hear that voice put to more lustrous use on Eating
Us, which benefits from the production of Dave Fridmann (the
Flaming Lips, MGMT, Sleater-Kinney). The acclaimed producer adds
high-definition vividness to BMSR’s heretofore faded, blurred
productions, boldfacing and italicizing the murky details. While
Eating Us often billows into orchestral majesty, it loses none
of BMSR’s quirky charm and the songs here exude an even more striking
beauty. For example, the instrumental “Smile the Day After Today” is
currently the most gorgeous song in the world.
“I wanted someone who could do the opposite of what I’ve always
done,” Tobacco explains regarding his decision to hire Fridmann. “He
knows atmosphere and space really well, and drums probably better than
anyone. I could never engineer anything like that. I don’t know if I’ll
ever do another hi-fi studio record, but if I do, he’d be my first
choice. I feel more at home doing it myself, but I felt almost like I
had something to prove or disprove this time around.”
While the world’s hipper minds are starting to turn on to BMSR,
Tobacco’s 2008 solo album for Anticon, Fucked Up Friends,
deserves serious headphone time, too. Bearing BMSR’s florid
analog-synth and mellotron embroidery, the tracks here stress Tobacco’s
keen grasp of funk while favoring a grittier, grimier textural
palette.
“I look at BMSR stuff as what I’d like to hear a whole band play or
ideas that I don’t mind letting other people have input on,” Tobacco
delineates. “The Tobacco stuff right now is all my grossest urges, or
maybe what I really want to do, as opposed to what might be best for
the listener.”
BMSR and Tobacco’s ascent to the festival circuit and blogosphere
adulation has been one of the most encouraging musical developments of
recent years. But it hasn’t gone to Tobacco’s warped
head—yet.
“I’m surprised anyone is listening at all sometimes.” 
