Mother Mother
Touch Up/Last Gang
Touch Up/Last Gang
4/5
A wonderfully quirky and vocally oriented group hailing from Vancouver, Mother Mother have formulated a rather clever affair of pluck n’ twang acoustic pop fleshed out by clever rhythm and groove. The three air-tight vocalists keep their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, spouting nursery rhyme lyrics over the clap your hands and stomp your feet funky-tonk vibes. It works best when it’s paired with a trumped up production suite, best exemplified by the mostly hip-hop flavored “Verbatim”, boasting the biggest beat and best fuzzed out bass ever laid over a country riff, or the summertime sing-along of “Polynesia”, an exercise in verbal control and tongue twistery. Actually a re-visiting or re-issue of earlier work, adorned with a few extra touch ups (!) and songs to boot, Touch Up is in a class of its own, a serious lecture in the school of creativity and original thought. Hardly flawless, a few of the simpler, slower tracks tend to grate the nerves but are easily forgiven on the merits and strength of the main body of material. Having secured a four album deal with quality-over-quantity Canadian indie label Last Gang, Mother Mother are poised to birth a following of suckling hipsters.
I, Lion
A wonderfully quirky and vocally oriented group hailing from Vancouver, Mother Mother have formulated a rather clever affair of pluck n’ twang acoustic pop fleshed out by clever rhythm and groove. The three air-tight vocalists keep their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks, spouting nursery rhyme lyrics over the clap your hands and stomp your feet funky-tonk vibes. It works best when it’s paired with a trumped up production suite, best exemplified by the mostly hip-hop flavored “Verbatim”, boasting the biggest beat and best fuzzed out bass ever laid over a country riff, or the summertime sing-along of “Polynesia”, an exercise in verbal control and tongue twistery. Actually a re-visiting or re-issue of earlier work, adorned with a few extra touch ups (!) and songs to boot, Touch Up is in a class of its own, a serious lecture in the school of creativity and original thought. Hardly flawless, a few of the simpler, slower tracks tend to grate the nerves but are easily forgiven on the merits and strength of the main body of material. Having secured a four album deal with quality-over-quantity Canadian indie label Last Gang, Mother Mother are poised to birth a following of suckling hipsters.
I, Lion
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Mother Mother are playing Amigo's June 22nd, and it's NOT to be missed. Joining them will be Saskatoon's own acoustic dance troupe Volcanoless In Canada, and I predict BIG things for this show. The Volcanoless boys have recently just returned from their inaugural summer tour where they happened to catch MM live in both Ottawa and Montereal, and they were still *glowing* from having seem them play live. Mitch claiming they were "5000 times better than" he had ever anticipated. Be there!
