Oscar Wilde knew it, Roald Dahl knew it, and Black Moth Tremendous Rainbow understand it, too: essentially the most fucked-up tales are fairy tales. Within the grainy video for “All 2 of Us,” the woozy lead single of Smooth New Magic Dream, grotesque clowns gnaw on hamburgers with their mouths open, salivate over human flesh, and naked their fangs with sadistic, slack-jawed glee. It’s R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour meets Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, a psych-pop lullaby set towards a psychological thriller. Within the insular world of BMSR, is it essentially new? For 20 years and counting, the Pittsburgh band has churned out synthy dreamscapes with a dreadful edge, music for the second a weed brownie makes you nauseous. On the band’s on-line store, you should purchase a vinyl document, or, should you like, a shrunken head preserved in everlasting anguish. If this new album is an try, within the phrases of its first tune, to “Open the Fucking Fantasy,” the need appears misplaced—the fantasy has been open, and unchanging, since 2003. Is it nonetheless magic or simply muscle reminiscence?
On their first album in seven years, there may be proof for each: some moments that shock, and others that make the fantasy really feel formulaic. Black Moth Tremendous Rainbow’s sound stays distinctly their very own, which is spectacular contemplating the referential period they outlived. Within the mid-2000s, after they launched their earliest and most enduring work, hypnagogic pop was in vogue, as was hauntology—home-recorded soundtracks for half-remembered desires. What BMSR did in a different way than, say, John Maus and James Ferraro, was pinpoint not the depressive downfall, however the even-eerier interval when all the things feels too okay. Their greatest songs had been deceptively wistful, mourning somebody who wasn’t there, one thing that hadn’t occurred but. On the brand new album, although, this funhouse-meets-funeral idea extra typically feels rehearsed—a mysterious band demystified by its personal more and more unmysterious vibe.
That the thriller nonetheless hits, even when solely typically, is a testomony to how sturdy the BMSR spell could be. Whereas Smooth New Magic Dream largely re-hashes the Black Moth Tremendous Rainbow method, it additionally often manages to search out new colours in previous constraints—not abandoning their schtick, however not copy-pasting it both. Within the slinky music breaks of “Unknown Potion,” you may make out traces of “Smile the Day After At the moment,” a sparse instrumental standout from 2009’s Consuming Us. Self-parody? No. A step ahead? Additionally no: It’s the sound of a band whose longevity has left it standing in its personal shadow. This feels notably grating on tracks that go on for somewhat too lengthy, just like the otherwise-solid “Open the Fucking Fantasy.” By the third refrain—and for a lot of the LP—the magic carpet is certainly revved up. It will be good if we went someplace.
Black Moth Tremendous Rainbow are led by Tobacco, a semi-anonymous vocoder fanatic with creepy-crawly music of his personal. In some methods, BMSR characterize an extension of his warped universe: identical gooey typeface, identical friendly-monster vocals, identical sickly-sweet fever dream. For higher or worse, his fingerprints are in every single place on Smooth New Magic Dream. “Tastebud” is the strongest non-single right here, partially due to its uncomfortable pauses—a trick that gave Scorching Moist & Sassy its tense, impending-doom textures. It’s a uncommon second that feels like Black Moth Tremendous Rainbow produced by Tobacco the eclectic artist, quite than Tobacco the eclectic artist placing away his MPC to face behind a microphone. Extra typically, we get less-exciting moments like “Demon’s Glue,” a five-minute tune that plateaus in BMSR’s candy-colored consolation zone by minute two. Black Moth Tremendous Rainbow are masters of their insular, very particular, Nyan Cat-adjacent musical world. Increasingly, it’s starting to really feel like Neverland: a spot the place nobody ever grows up, however nothing ever modifications.
