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“Black Moth drawn to the light of a psychedelic, self-indulgent night”
By Benjamin Ortiz, Special to the Tribune
Section: Tempo
Date: Monday, March 31, 2008


This is how Black Moth Super Rainbow turned the Empty Bottle into a full-blown psychedelic circus Saturday night:
The mix called for balloons bounced about the crowd; beastly beaked piñatas; bubble machines blowing syrupy froth; and grainy video projections that ran the gamut from Richard Simmons gyrating to Tyra Banks pouting. But why stop there? The five-piece brought on deranged hand puppets bobbing through layers of Vocodor and dense funk backbeats. Then, as icing, they blew apart the piñatas, sending Hello Kitty dolls and deformed sugar-suckers flying in all directions.
Such a cerebral tapestry calls to mind the band’s logo, bearing the motto “Taste the Rainbow” with a bloody, candied tomato dripping organic gore all over a backdrop of industrial decay. And it stands in contrast to the backwoods Pennsylvania combo’s soft-spoken stage demeanor. But don’t confuse soft-spoken with non-assertive. As evidenced at the Empty Bottle, Black Moth knows how to create a vocal simmer that sits just above a caldron of effects, distortion and voice-box amplification.
The band’s Chicago set list, lasting about a dozen songs and just less than an hour, came mainly from their last recording, “Dandelion Gum” (Graveface) — supposedly a concept album based on rural folklore about witches luring youngsters into the woods with irresistible sweet-tooth treats.
It would be easy to describe the total effect as aerobics on cough syrup, except the music — at turns pensively down-tempo, then electrifying, upbeat and juicy — kept the audience pumping their fists. The synth-pulsing sounds alternated between a mock-instructional gym theme, a Moog suite sounding akin to a TV title track (think “The Rockford Files” meets “Columbo”) and the straight-up neo-hippie electro anthem, “Melt Me.”
That song proved the set’s high point — a variation on Alice’s Wonderland instructions to “drink me.” The crowd near the stage thoroughly enjoyed the funky rhythm spread between throbbing bass lines, a hip-hoppish snare and synthesizer tweaks and wobbles.
But fans got only one spare encore and minimal interaction from the artists, as if Black Moth’s solipsistic compositions kept the members completely inside their heads. Yet they were really into what they’re doing, as bassist Power Pill Fist (sporting a glorious beard-fro and orange wristbands) topped an amp to dig into the groove from up above and hand out low-fives. That said: You have to wonder why lead vocalist Tobacco never left his half-lotus position, and the bopping keyboardists perched all-consumed over equipment like kids with Mattel toys on a 1970s Christmas morning.
With the Black Moth set finished, the Empty Bottle returned to its grungy self, the aftertaste akin to waking up from headache sleep, deep in a pool of your own slobber — you want more of the dream, but wonder why.

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