One Day Holiday - This Album is Eating Us
* One Day Holiday is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly around music and random stuff that ranges from the coherent to the absolutely absurd.
This, I guess, must be the time of the year isn't it? A lot of people that I know at the office are under the weather, while I've been having a really bad bouts of flu for almost two weeks and not even Clarinase could handle it. Please do not get me wrong - Clarinase works for me for every time I have running nose. It's a miracle pill that thing. But this year's version is a bit more um, determined. Determinedly persistent. It's gone today, come round back again tomorrow. It's like a tax dodger being hunted down by an IRB agent - for as long as you don't pay your tax, no matter how you try to run or hide, they will be right just around the corner, ready to pounce like a lion that has been going hungry for two months.
Anyway, this week I discovered something that I could not believe it myself but it was I who committed it myself in the first place so I am just being surprised with myself for doing what I just did myself. Err, right. That something turns out to be not listening to Black Moth Super Rainbow's fourth (if my calculations were correct) studio offering, released somewhere in July last year.
I agree with Mason Jones who reviewed this album and said that the difference between Eating Us, their new album, and Dandelion Gum, their previous, breakthrough album, is producer Dave Fridmann. I am not quite sure really on how to sum up the whole package but it feels 'organic'. Weird word choice, I know, to describe a Black Moth Super Rainbow's album. The vocodered vocal part, for instance, doesn't help, and the fact that almost a hundred percent of the time you will feel like you have to listen to this album while being high on drugs. You just simply can't do it while you're still sober. It feels morally wrong.
However, unlike Dandelion Gum, the new album is not a fantasorgasmicterstellar hallucinogenic trip through colors and funky shapes and amazing sound from the entrance to the exit. The album is more mellow and relaxed and soothing and rejuvenating and relaxing. (Yes, I was going through an advert for a spa while writing this) They are not putting you on a roller coaster ride in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but are gently pulling your hands while running down through a field full of buttercups. Unlike their 2007 release, all the instruments involved in the making of their amazing sound doesn't get mashed up in one serving of a big bowl of punch. It all comes to you one by one. You can hear the drums, the organ, the guitar, the banjo - you can hear each instruments very clearly.
The other amazing thing about their new album is that they do not spend the entire album being simply happily trippy. Song like "Smile the Day After Today" reminded me of Beck circa Sea Change. The drum opening sounds just like the one on "Lonesome Tears", and the crisp, autumnal acoustic line is just like any other song in that (what I call it as) one Hell of a break-up album. They even sound dark and dangerous at one occasion("Iron Lemonade"). Whereas at other time it sounds like a dreamy, hot Sunday afternoon ("Gold Splatter" & "Fields are Breathing"). And so because of and for this fact alone, you know that for once you don't have to take drugs to listen to BMSR.
Please do not get me wrong - this is still very much a proper BMSR record. All the trademarks of what BMSR is, and what made a BMSR record, is still all over the album. It is still trippy, the voice still sounds alien and detached, and you can never for the love of God make out what Tobacco were singing about ("Tooth Decay" for example), but you can bet that it must be a collection of random musings scribbled on a piece of paper while being drunk the night before recording.
But what makes this album a proper winner is because while listening to it, it doesn't leave you out of the party. It doesn't make you feel 'alone'. In the previous one, the whole band is having one big hallucinogenic trip and you were left out of it while staring mouth open in utter disbelief. On this one, they are more 'down to Earth'. You could connect with them, with their music. The band is no longer on a trip but the party is still on, and you're invited. This time you can feel the music, the groove, the whole occasion, in you - like it is almost 'organic'. And you can say that it is all down to the magic of the producer.
* One Day Holiday is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly around music and random stuff that ranges from the coherent to the absolutely absurd.
This, I guess, must be the time of the year isn't it? A lot of people that I know at the office are under the weather, while I've been having a really bad bouts of flu for almost two weeks and not even Clarinase could handle it. Please do not get me wrong - Clarinase works for me for every time I have running nose. It's a miracle pill that thing. But this year's version is a bit more um, determined. Determinedly persistent. It's gone today, come round back again tomorrow. It's like a tax dodger being hunted down by an IRB agent - for as long as you don't pay your tax, no matter how you try to run or hide, they will be right just around the corner, ready to pounce like a lion that has been going hungry for two months.
Anyway, this week I discovered something that I could not believe it myself but it was I who committed it myself in the first place so I am just being surprised with myself for doing what I just did myself. Err, right. That something turns out to be not listening to Black Moth Super Rainbow's fourth (if my calculations were correct) studio offering, released somewhere in July last year.
I agree with Mason Jones who reviewed this album and said that the difference between Eating Us, their new album, and Dandelion Gum, their previous, breakthrough album, is producer Dave Fridmann. I am not quite sure really on how to sum up the whole package but it feels 'organic'. Weird word choice, I know, to describe a Black Moth Super Rainbow's album. The vocodered vocal part, for instance, doesn't help, and the fact that almost a hundred percent of the time you will feel like you have to listen to this album while being high on drugs. You just simply can't do it while you're still sober. It feels morally wrong.
However, unlike Dandelion Gum, the new album is not a fantasorgasmicterstellar hallucinogenic trip through colors and funky shapes and amazing sound from the entrance to the exit. The album is more mellow and relaxed and soothing and rejuvenating and relaxing. (Yes, I was going through an advert for a spa while writing this) They are not putting you on a roller coaster ride in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, but are gently pulling your hands while running down through a field full of buttercups. Unlike their 2007 release, all the instruments involved in the making of their amazing sound doesn't get mashed up in one serving of a big bowl of punch. It all comes to you one by one. You can hear the drums, the organ, the guitar, the banjo - you can hear each instruments very clearly.
The other amazing thing about their new album is that they do not spend the entire album being simply happily trippy. Song like "Smile the Day After Today" reminded me of Beck circa Sea Change. The drum opening sounds just like the one on "Lonesome Tears", and the crisp, autumnal acoustic line is just like any other song in that (what I call it as) one Hell of a break-up album. They even sound dark and dangerous at one occasion("Iron Lemonade"). Whereas at other time it sounds like a dreamy, hot Sunday afternoon ("Gold Splatter" & "Fields are Breathing"). And so because of and for this fact alone, you know that for once you don't have to take drugs to listen to BMSR.
Please do not get me wrong - this is still very much a proper BMSR record. All the trademarks of what BMSR is, and what made a BMSR record, is still all over the album. It is still trippy, the voice still sounds alien and detached, and you can never for the love of God make out what Tobacco were singing about ("Tooth Decay" for example), but you can bet that it must be a collection of random musings scribbled on a piece of paper while being drunk the night before recording.
But what makes this album a proper winner is because while listening to it, it doesn't leave you out of the party. It doesn't make you feel 'alone'. In the previous one, the whole band is having one big hallucinogenic trip and you were left out of it while staring mouth open in utter disbelief. On this one, they are more 'down to Earth'. You could connect with them, with their music. The band is no longer on a trip but the party is still on, and you're invited. This time you can feel the music, the groove, the whole occasion, in you - like it is almost 'organic'. And you can say that it is all down to the magic of the producer.
Labels: black moth super rainbow
posted by Hafeez at 7:26 PM
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