It’s a sad fact that with all solo side projects, comparisons to the parent band are a journalistic ball and chain: something to be dragged about, slowing down proceedings and generally causing a godawful nuisance. So here’s me addressing the issue head on: yes, Tobacco is a key member of Pittsburgh experimentalists Black Moth Super Rainbow. But no, the former’s new project is not a cheap imitation of the latter, nor is it a vast and unparalleled improvement. There’s much more going on here. Got it?
That’s not to say that there aren’t connections, though. For his first solo outing, Tobacco appears to have taken a few aspects of the BMSR sound – namely lo-fi hip-hop beats, swooping analogue synths and his trademark vocoded voice – and distilled them. The result is that Fucked Up Friends is an album with focus, if not huge variety; its stylistic boundaries can be marked out by the stomping, bass-led filth of ‘Street Trash’ on the one hand, and the Daft Punk vocoder-chic of ‘Gross Magik’ on the other, with a strong vein of antiquated electronica running throughout.
Interestingly, the quickfire succession of mostly short tracks suggests an album of beats, not songs. Perhaps this is Tobacco’s way of paying homage to oft-cited BMSR influence Odd Nosdam; tunes such as ‘Trick Sweat’ and ‘Side 8’ certainly carry the dense, mucky mark of the Anticon co-founder. In any case, the oft-deployed beatsmith’s trick of dropping in the occasional uber-short track to mix things up is in evidence (the biggest culprit being the 11 second long ‘Get My Nails Did’).
Sadly, though, there are still points where Fucked Up Friends drags. Of course, writing a 16 track record all on your lonesome must be tough (I certainly couldn’t do it), but as the album progresses, Tobacco’s repertoire of sounds become increasingly thinly spread. ‘Little Pink Riding Hood’, for example, could feasibly be a Doner kebab-style reconstitution of a few earlier tracks, and ‘Backwoods Altar’ feels like an unnecessary restatement.
But not to worry; salvation is at hand. And it lies, not in the mildly inane acid stylings of closer ‘Grease Wizard’, nor the verging-on-cheesy vocoder pop of ‘Gross Magik’, but in the album’s darker, more meditative moments. ‘Tape Eater’, for example, is a delicious piece of brooding atmospherics, while ‘Pink Goo’ coasts over self-consciously kitsch ‘wolf-howl’ synths. In both of these tracks, and a few other points on Fucked Up Friends, Tobacco flirts with a quasi-cinematic approach which could see him through a few more albums yet. For now though – and at the risk of sounding like a tagline-chasing hack – why not stick this in your musical pipe? It’s certainly worth a puff or two.
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Tobacco on Myspace
It’s a sad fact that with all solo side projects, comparisons to the parent band are a journalistic ball and chain: something to be dragged about, slowing down proceedings and generally causing a godawful nuisance. So here’s me addressing the issue head on: yes, Tobacco is a key member of Pittsburgh experimentalists Black Moth Super Rainbow. But no, the former’s new project is not a cheap imitation of the latter, nor is it a vast and unparalleled improvement. There’s much more going on here. Got it? Continue Reading
