After a sly remark about the silent audience paying tribute to the late Senator Kennedy, Soundpool began their synth-centric dopamine fest. The set was delayed slightly, as the show was held outdoors under the ICA's unique awning-style architecture, and the New England weather needed time to consider whether or not to ruin the evening. Boston's favorite party-people Big Digits relieved the tense audience. Their eclectic mix even had some of the Institute's weathered trustees tapping their feet.
Quickly after the closing drone of Soundpool's set drowned into the usual noise of a harbor-side museum, Black Moth Super Rainbow's intro video began. It was a clever collection of seemingly found Youtube videos tearing apart the band and thereby unifying the audience against random people fucking up the band name again and again, amid suggestions that calling the band “Black Rainbow” would have been a better PR move, and demeaning “the fools that would spend twenty bucks to see this band.” The video was? wasn't? successful because the noisy audience was as engaged as ever to be at the show. And they were rewarded with a continuous body-melting-punch-in-the-face, as the band performed their signature jams. One thing that seemed to be on the minds of the more attentive audience was where's Tobacco? I hear him, but I don't see him. Is he in the harbor, on that sailboat? Is this pre-recorded? Oh! There he is, sitting cross-legged, behind the amp and the drumset, holding his own little isolated pow-wow. The folks who ventured from the museum's bleachers to the floor were groovin, and for the modest “entertain me” viewers, BMSR had visuals of severed body parts, floating around flowers, and psychodelic swirls.
