Black Moth Super Rainbow, Eating Us (Graveface)

This is so up my alley—Moog synthesizers, trip-hop drums, and melancholy robo-vocals singing surprisingly solid melodies. Psychedelia is rarely this convincing and this attractive. When Tobacco robo-sings “Iron Lemonade / eat my face away,” the music has enough darkness to give the lines some danger. Critics and supporters have made much of Mercury Rev/Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann’s involvement with the album, the band’s first fully hi-fi effort, but that’s not fair to BMSR. Eating Us may present a refining of the concept, but the significant ideas were all present on Dandelion Gum. Sound aside, the biggest difference is that Eating Us doesn’t smell like the packaging was fabricated by Topps. And the sonic raw edges are all still there on Tobacco’s solo album from last fall, Fucked Up Friends, suggesting that a cleaner, spacier sound is an informed choice—one that lets the weirdness swell up to its natural size.