Black Moth Super Rainbow @ Bowery Ballroom, 12/5/12

[photos by Christian Romero]

Few bands have more distinct iconography than that of Black Moth Super Rainbow. It comes with the territory of their psychedelic style of music, which invokes thoughts of settings ranging from peaceful countrysides to space journeys to nuclear wastelands. They’ve been gaining some traction lately, with the successful release of their fifth album via Kickstarter, Cobra Juicy. It’s their most accessible album yet, and their increasing legion of fans shows it.

Playing live, under strange pseudonyms, BMSR has all the ingredients for a successful electronic act. They perform as a five piece, with percussion, strings, synth and wildly warped vocals from their frontman, Tobacco. Their visuals feature various landscapes, which go on at their own pace entirely independent of the songs performed. It’s a good whole package, and with some of the newer upbeat jams the audience even cut loose a bit.

Tobacco has a whole cult of fucked up friends, so a Black Moth show is always guaranteed to have some really sick supporting acts. Tonight there were two groovy acts by the names of The Stargazer Lillies and The Casket Girls. Lillies were first and could be more aptly nicknamed as shoegazers over stargazers, with that sort of droning guitar that makes you feel like you’re falling down a bottomless pit. Little material exists for them outside of some singles off their basecamp currently, but perhaps we’ll see an LP next year.

The Casket Girls, if the name wasn’t a dead giveaway, lace their music with Halloween themes. They’re a project of BMSR guitarist Ryan Graveface, who runs the label that unites these bands (BMSR is an alumni). The eponymous girls of this group are two sisters from Georgia whose choreographed moves and singing definitely evoke the senses in a macabre sort of fashion. Their debut LP, entitled Sleepwalking, was released earlier this year; it could be loosely categorized as an indie pop shoegaze hybrid.