Mother Mother

One Liner: Strange Canadian indie rock recently made popular by TikTok.

Wikipedia Genre: Indie rock
Home:  British Columbia, Canada

Poster Position: 18
Weekend One Only.

Sunday at 1pm on the Honda Stage.

Thoughts:  I gotta say, the first song has taken me on such a serious roller-coaster ride.  You need to just listen to that one right now before you read anything else.

It starts out with that insistent little guitar noodle and I'm like "oh, okay, some alt. rock stuff, this sounds good so far."  And then the ska/"Take on Me" rhythm jumps up for a quick piece, before the scary little children start chanting that their daddy has a gun and you'd better run.  Then a more normal voice (well, if a Jack White sounding bark is normal?) comes in to sing about young lovers in the hay (who are maybe about to get killed?), before the skanking begins again.  This song has freaking 161 million streams?  What is the world is going on.  And it's like 13 years old?  What is happening?  I kinda like it, but what is happening?  A 2008 album spawned their top hit, and they have millions and millions of streams of these songs, and yet I have no clue who they are.

Lots of good harmonies.  But the more I listen, the more it sounds like Jack White (or the Cage the Elephant guy) with some women backing him up.  Who are these people?  They are a Canadian indie rock band based in British Columbia whose last album was 2018.  Nothing about their bio on Wikipedia makes it seem like a band with hundreds of millions of streams, until you get to the last paragraph of their History: "Although Mother Mother had not released new music in two years, songs from their 2007 album, O My Heart, went viral on the video-sharing platform TikTok, causing their music to reach new streaming highs on Spotify. The songs, in particular "Hayloft", "Arms Tonite", and "Wrecking Ball", became popular, with videos including cosplay and gothic fashion. Although no particular event caused the surge, the band's music did resonate with non-binary communities, as users played Mother Mother songs while discussing gender-related topics."  Freaking TikTok, man.  I bet my daughter loves this band I'd never heard of until just now...

Seven albums, one new one on the way in June.  The 2008 album that is hot with the kids these days is pretty good - its a little weird, with offbeat instrumentation and dark lyrics.  Being tired of his body, or breaking his hand just because he can?  But it kind of brings the New Pornographers to mind.  Here is "Wrecking Ball," another of the TikTok ones - and a very enjoyable song too!

Their first album has a touch of country going on in it, which is a funny juxtaposition.  And "Love and Truth" has a pile of campiness to it as though it is a show tune.  But "Verbatim" is pretty cool sounding.  Funny enough, "Tic Toc," also on that first album, is freaking terrible.  

I'm less of a fan of the most recent album (2018's Dance and Cry) - its a little more traditionally poppy, and I like the less traditional style of the older stuff.  For example, the top track is "It's Alright," with 23.8 million streams.

Feels like the Lumineers tried to make a public service announcement for a suicide hotline.  Also, the lead singer makes me think of that scary fucker from Die Antwoord.  It's also a little confusing in it's message.  Did he make mistakes, or is there a reason he acted that way?  Those seem like opposing views.  If you "made a mistake" by yelling NICE TITS! at a woman as she walked by, that seems less forgivable than if you had Tourette's as the reason you acted that way.

They have a new EP out in 2021 - Forgotten Souls - and it is solid.  Again, feeling New Pornographers here with a touch of synth rock and hard indie-ness, but also some added beauty from the boy/girl harmonies.  The title track includes a really nice, kind of spacey, guitar solo.  But then "Pure Love" is kind of boring and unfocused, before "I Got Love" sounds like Freddie Mercury yelping those words over a driving beat.  Unfocused is actually a good word for this.

This stuff is all over the place.  I have no clue what you would expect in the live show, but I guess if they were trying to play up their new TikTok fame, then those songs are pretty fun sounding.  But I'd more than likely expect to do something else with this time.