Black Moth Super Rainbow - Panic Blooms (2018)

The long overdue 6th album by Black Moth Super Rainbow. "Panic Blooms" is a f**ked up and bleeding account of depression and the shadow side of human frailty, full of gorgeous warped melodies that exist as their own genre, somewhere between late 90s Warp Records, dub, and chopped and screwed codeine drip. It's not drug music, it's dragged music, oozing through the muck of the present moment, past mutating the present, demon melodies filtered through the vain search for light. This is why Pitchfork claimed BMSR mastered the balance between the grotesque and beautiful. Spin hailed their "consistently great records of mind-altering, sugar-coated, vocoder-heavy psychedelic pop." Stereogum saluted their "excellent haze." Encoded in a syrupy fog, TOBACCO's lines stab with more ferocity than ever before. From the first track, the knives are out and slashing with chimerical violent imagery: mouths bleeding from razor blades stashed in tangerines and the ominous sensation of feeling haunted. There are sunset curses and diseased plants, sunburn fevers and doomsday downgrades, pink apocalyptic suns and sinister omens. It's reminiscent of the phrase used to describe surrealism: as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.