Army of Moths 🇬🇧 - ‘The Chaos Emporium’ (Album )

Good day to you, are you looking for anything in particular?

Army of Moths have appeared fairly frequently on these pages, but the 1st issue I always have is that I never quite know how to describe them, not helped by their Bandcamp page having the most apt and cute description that I never thought could be beaten: “a barrage of noises, all bundled together like a plastic bag full of broken pop music, thrown in the boot of a Ford Cortina and driven into a river of psychedelia…”

Except that description is now out of date, because over the last few years a slow transformation has been taking place. Piece by piece, barrage by barrage, the Moths have been assembling a huge musical construction that I suspect started in a tiny back room somewhere in Lancashire, spread to their back garden (and all of their neighbours), then got moved to somewhere hidden in the Lake District, not in the boot of a 70’s car, but hauled by a gigantic crane, and is now ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world, or launched up into the sky like Astropup. Welcome to The Chaos Emporium.

It is their 3rd album, following on from the whimsical ‘Sorry to Disturb You’ and the more ambitious ‘By Word of Moth’, whilst in between we’ve treated to very possibly the greatest EP in musical history (and certainly the greatest one about dogs), ‘A Canine Trilogy’, a Christmas offering, and a number of ‘demo’ releases in between.

Opening track ‘The Chaos Emporium’ offers more in the 1st minute than many bands can offer in an album, with the most beautiful goosebump inducing musical phrasing after just 20 seconds, before we're introduced to The Chaos Emporium itself, a dusty Tardis style back street store packed full ‘gyroscopes, telescopes,… dolls that talk, caged birds that sing….’, whilst musically we’re taken on a journey that similarly time travels across the decades.

‘The Trouble with Norman’ is a jaunty pop song, with more than a hint of Cardiacs in the accompanying instrumentation, football terrace chanting aimed at the songs hero and featuring none other than Chris Anderson from Crayola Lectern, who possibly once played in a band with Nick from Finnish label Soliti. The twists and turns of’TV Times’ are musically ingenious, but lyrically there’s a sadness underpinning the song, because when the doorbell rings ‘he doesn’t need the real world in his 24 hour fantasy’.

‘All Things Come to Those Who Wait’ mixes punk agitation with lovely string sounds whilst the brilliantly titled ‘Repetitive Dirge of the Common Man’ maintains a serious intensity, an anthem capturing both the mundane and nonsense of every day life. I love the lyrics in particular in ‘SFM’, whilst ‘You Light Up My World’ is a reminder that at the heart of this album are gorgeous tunes, this time accompanied by extended instrumental sections that cavort joyously, with the lyrics twisting as frequently as the music - ‘you light up… you fucked up my world’.

The curious ‘Mile Wide Smile’ is poignant at first, crescendoing to a huge climax that seems to match the vastness of the galaxy, all seen through one big human smile and with lyrics that need further exploration: “at the end of the day everything ends up back where it started, over billions and billions of years, billions and billions of atoms all floating around, together, the space, as one… yeah’’ . And then they return to the theme of love, with ‘Love Sermon Part Three’ a monstrous track extolling again the beauty of love, ‘let us join together in the arbitrary singing in the cult of moth as we celebrate love’. It’s lovely yet slightly absurd, as if they’re never taking themselves too seriously.

Of course that’s about 9 tracks, which for many bands would be quite enough for an album, but Army of Moths are just half way through, and ‘The Chaos Emporium (Part Two)’ takes us into the 2nd half of the album. It’s also quite possibly my favourite track of the album, an exhilarating instrumental ride with a simply ludicrous anthemic advert for The Chaos Emporium thrown in the middle. The opening to ‘And Run’ is startling and just that little bit scary, I love the vocals on this track. with massive contrasts between the soaring chorus and childlike vocals in the verse, before the track inevitably disappears off in a different direction. The scale of both this track and ‘Dust Away’ are staggering, in the latter with searing guitars giving way to moving and mystical vocals, and musical moments that reach the scale of Major Parkinson in Blackbox.

‘Your Astral Plane Or Mine’ builds layers of instrumentals and a thumping instrumental theme that seems like a sonic prayer to the Universe, and after the interlude of ‘Y.O.U.’ we’re offered another highlight, as ‘Sir Hiram Maxim’s Captive Flying Machines’ has the most gorgeous tune, there’s a simplicity to the track (at least most of it) that reminds me that Army of Moths are just a pop band after all, who write such good melodies. Meanwhile the complexity lyrically of ‘Wolves Did it’ intrigues me, and given this album is full of individual moments of brilliance, I guess I should highlight the piano crash at 3:25 as being one of my favourites, and don’t be fooled by the calm opening, this track builds into something completely stunning.

And of course they finish with a really beautiful track, ‘The Nearly Nearly Light’, a gorgeous introduction, and then imploring us to ‘open up’ our fragile hearts, to be ‘anything we want to be’, to dream big and to follow the light to guide us along the way. It’s a completely stunning conclusion.

The Chaos Emporium has simply wonderful, spine tingling moments of musical beauty, huge sing-a-along tunes, gorgeous lyrics, all written to the scale of a Bruckner symphony. And it is a complete triumph from start to finish.

Yet here’s the thing. I feel I’ve still only just peered through the window.

The real beauty of The Chaos Emporium is that no matter how much times you visit it, you’ll always find something more special hidden in there. Because amongst the mannequins, doomsday clocks and dusty lepidoptery catalogues there are a thousands more treasures and musical ideas waiting to be discovered, maybe not today or tomorrow, but some day by someone. And that makes the album the most wondrous special thing.

Find the Army of Moths on Bandcamp.

Huge credit and thanks in particular to Mr Andre Lund (Ocean of Lotion), for the Mixing and Mastering.