Black Moth Super Rainbow bend perspectives to stunning effect on Panic Blooms

There are at least two temperaments pushing up against each other on Panic Blooms. There are distorted words that speak cryptically of multiplying apprehensions, and then there are the warped beat patterns and synthetic sunset sighs that cushion them. The album emits a breezy, bucolic glow not dissimilar to Boards of Canada, trading the windswept electric green of Scotland for Western Pennsylvania’s sooty maze of hills. Yet BMSR aren’t simulating comfortably unfamiliar memories on the title track, “Bad Fuckin Times” and the like. The sinking feelings behind them are not comfortable and all too familiar.

“We like to wander into the violence/It feels like nothing and we’re already there/I’d rather be here into the quietness/It feels like nothing and we’re already there", begins “Baby’s in the Void”. Fight or flight, the outcome is the same when up against the abyss. A tangled, harsh response replies toward the end of the song, two voices attempting to communicate across a flickering minefield. Panic Blooms may put a bleak first foot forward, but it isn’t the dark ride its track list suggests. Fec may warn of plans gone at the seams, the sun going black and gardens never growing in “Rip on Through”, but then “Permanent Hole” is dotted with images of running in the sunshine with an old friend.

Setting bent perspective against bent digital funk and soaked through with bleeding color, Panic Blooms is a record on edge, but one that ultimately knows on which side to come down.