#panic blooms

[orgydrills]

Siamese, Siamese, your plant's got a disease, It can't grow back, it's the zodiac, And the bad shit that you dream For you, for you, there's nothin’ I can do, The sun went black and your hand came back, But your garden never grew...

[dustedmagazine]

Black Moth Super Rainbow — Panic Blooms (Rad Cult)

Tom Fec’s music goes to your head, for better or worse. Whether recording solo as Tobacco or with the other heavily-monikered members of Black Moth Super Rainbow, Fec’s charismatic lo-fi psychedelia creates an atmosphere that’s at once psychologically disturbing and physically consuming — or vice versa, depending on the song. Agitated, ebbing, blown out or acidic, his music is both deceptively simple and enveloping. Panic Blooms, the latest from Black Moth Super Rainbow, doesn’t so much puncture that atmosphere as vaporize a few layers. The result is both their airiest and most melancholy release.

Wavering keys, high-pitched synths, hazy beats and Fec’s breathiest use of vocoder to date create Panic Blooms’ wandering, mournful world. Left alone, the album blurs and clouds together; without close attention, the songs can easily slide into a single, undulating unit. The sound isn’t exactly monotonal, but neither do any of the 16 tracks separate much instrumentally. Certainly, hearing “Aerosol Weather” in isolation, with its warm, bouncing riff, persistent drums and affected cymbal bursts, might signal a departure from the dreamy morass, but, taken in context, the song is merely a slope, rising over the rim of the album’s trough. Gone are the spurts of aggression that haunted the band’s past. The flare-ups and queasy violence that infused everything from the music to the grotesque cover art have been replaced by something that, while still haunting, is softer, fatigued and intimate. Where in the past, Fec and company might’ve turned the belligerence up several notches for the climax of the blinking, fuzzy “We Might Come Back”, the track is basically left to breathe. This sense of resignation is stark throughout Panic Blooms, particularly on the slim instrumental “To the Beat of a Creeper.” The track initially languishes in soft static and pitch-bending acoustic guitar plucks, ending abruptly just as an ascending synth line seems poised to bring the music, and its creator, back to life.  

With a sparser sound, Fec’s subdued vocals are illuminated. The cliche “quietly devastating” is appropriate. Track 15, “Sunset Curses” is particularly despondent. When Fec’s glitchy voice floats over a pining series of synthetic string approximations, you can practically hear him sigh as he admits, seemingly to himself, that when “the sun goes down, the bad shit wins.” The title track too, finds ruin in the dark. Nocturnal car trouble, real or metaphorical, evokes an oppressive, recurring nostalgia. It would be difficult to come up with a more Black Moth Super Rainbow couplet than “Your mouth is bleeding out / from a razor blade in a tangerine,” but “I feel you hauntin’ me every other year on my birthday” cuts to the real sentiment: no matter the frequency, grief can be a chronic condition. From its title alone, Panic Blooms’ closer, “Mr No One,” wouldn’t seem to offer much absolution. However, “should get a little more sunshine / should get a little less haze, around me,” offers a hopeful rejoinder to the album’s bleak waywardness.  

Fec’s output has always been heady, but, beginning with his group’s last full-length, 2012’s Cobra Juicy, the music and lyrics have lately taken a wistful turn: more strained, less nightmarish, even openly romantic. Where on earlier releases Black Moth Super Rainbow seemed to be the gleeful expression of a twisted, sun-baked parallel world, the last two albums sound increasingly burned out on it. Panic Blooms, rather than reaching for the sticky pop highs of its predecessor, sounds like a purer expression of this emotional drift.  

Alex Johnson

[modestsnoust]

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Mr No One

[itsmightyfunny]

last night's ride never came could you meet me here in the seventh room? nowhere forever now feel like the lilacs grow,

feel the panic bloom i feel you hauntin' me every other year on my birthday

it's like bein' trapped in a fog you can be yourself but don't breathe the fumes

[oldtimereligionradiohour]

The World's Mad and I Just Wanna Listen to Panic Blooms and Sex & Food

The World’s Mad and I Just Wanna Listen to Panic Blooms and Sex & Food

Modern anxiety and brinksmanship have reached peak levels it seems, and two recent albums have captured our current balance of hope and worry perfectly for me.

Both released earlier this year, Black Moth Super Rainbow’s “Panic Blooms” and Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s “Sex & Food”really do it for me.  Each under their own power is good, but I think they’re better together.  They’re the alternate…

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[androgynouscollectivekingdom]

Listen/purchase: Rip on Through by Black Moth Super Rainbow

[orgydrills]

Nowhere forever now,  Feel the lilacs grow, Feel the panic bloom... It’s like bein’ trapped in a fog, You can be yourself... Just don’t breathe the fumes

[psychoace]

Black moth super rainbow - Permanent Hole