Dandelion Gum

Like the two previous Black Moth Super Rainbow albums, Dandelion Gum was recorded piecemeal over the course of a couple years, but unlike its predecessors, this is the first BMSR release that hangs together as a proper album. Folky acoustic tunes like "Neon Syrup for the Cemetery Sisters" get overlaid with whistling, burbling synth noises, while electronic grooves like "When the Sun Grows On Your Tongue" briefly open up into bucolic vistas of vocal overdubs. Speaking of vocals, as always singer-lyricist Tobacco spends the entire album crouched behind his Vocoder, turning himself into another instrument amongst the various synthesizers and heavily treated guitars that swirl around over Donna Kyler's subtle, tricky beats. Black Moth Super Rainbow have their musical antecedents--Boards of Canada's willfully unsettling electronica and the lo-fi experimentalism of the Elephant 6 bands come immediately to mind--but on Dandelion Gum, they perfect their signature blend of pastoral psychedelia and decaying retro-futurism. When a flood in the Graveface Records storage area destroyed the extant stock in 2010, the label decided to repress an expanded version that included a full album's worth of demos, alternate versions and previously unreleased tracks (also available for download under the title Extra Flavor), as well as a picture-disc LP and, as a sop to one of the more inexplicable hipster retro-fetishisms, an '80s-style pre-recorded cassette. (Guys, take it from someone who was there at the time: pre-recorded cassettes sounded awful.)