This follow-up to their intensely bright colour of life release Dandelion Gum (Graveface Records, 2007) is yet another chapter in the book that is Pittsburgh-based noise-pop collective Black Moth Super Rainbow. Of course it's weird and the band members have made-up aliases and it's a touch bit contrived and the song names are a sugary sweet flavour of sinister and that's not going to make everyone like them... But they have enlisted Dave Fridmann as a producer (who has worked with Flaming Lips, Mogwai, Sparklehorse, and more recently MGMT, and others) to deliver their usual sound to a much larger yet refined scale. Their drums are now played by hands not computer chips and their armouries of synths and vocoders have been punished to a much greater extent - but while Dandelion Gum was drawn out to a lengthy 17 tracks, Eating Us has been kept to a more-concise and focused 12 tracks.
The album's opener "Born On A Day The Sun Didn't Rise" is also the album's obvious single. But there are other songs to take care to hear as the tracks peel off while the minutes pass. Saccharine songs "Dark Bubbles" and "Twin Of Myself" set off on an overtly pop-happy note before "Iron Lemonade", "Fields Are Breathing" and "Bubblegum Animals" follow through in much the same fashion as notable tracks with varying degrees of synth / vocoder / vocal-noise / anime soundtrack togetherness.
In the past Black Moth Super Rainbow have been one of the more divisive groups I have come across - you either love them or you hate them. But with Eating Us as a grander extension of the previous album there's not much new to get excited about that was not there before.
But even though it's not all that courageous, as it is often said - if it ain't broke don't fix it.
