Choosing a band name can be tricky. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to find inspiration.
You could take the hip-hop approach and use the name of your hood (yer Cypress Hills, yer Portisheads and Sugarhill Gangs). Or you could borrow from another artist. Radiohead pinched their name from a Talking Heads song, Miss Black America from an Alec Empire album sleeve.
Then there’s the Black Moth Super Rainbow method, which appears to involve stabbing a pin at random into the nearest dictionary. It could be worse. They used to be called satanstompingcaterpillars…
In fairness, Black Moth’s name is perfectly suited to their music. This is cartoon electro-pop made and sung by cheerful robots from the backwoods of America. Think a pop Add N to (X), or Boards of Canada on a Tartrazine rush. They conjure up a candy-coated Willy Wonka world, with all the weirdness and wonder that implies. Musically it’s all fuzzy felt synths, melodies that burrow into your brain and vocals Vocoder’d into oblivion. Lyrically there’s something sinister going on. ‘Iron Lemonade’ sounds innocuous enough – until you clock the line about faces being eaten away.
Of course the elephant in the room here (or in BMSR terms, the pixie in the snow-globe, or something) is the presence of Dave Fridmann on knob twiddling duties. Hot from mega success with MGMT, there seems to be some expectation that his production magic will help bring BMSR to the masses. But ‘Eating Us’ isn’t another ‘Oracular Spectacular’. Sure, it shares some of the same bleary eyed, come-down vibe, but the lack of big riffs and legible vocals may restrict its appeal. Likewise, some will find the cutesiness a bit too much.
But who cares what a few squares think? Taken on its own terms, ‘Eating Us’ is a fun, addictive record that will make your day that bit better. It shares an affinity with the recent Air France album, which suggests that this summer may be characterised by creepy/cute dance music – and hooray for that.
It may not be perfect, but there’s gold at the end of this (super) rainbow.
7/10
