There’s a TikTok video in which writer, podcaster, and fashion designer Madeline Pendleton answers the question: “What’s the best show you’ve ever been to?” They preface their answer by rattling off the names of some all-time greats that they’ve had the privilege of seeing live: the B-52s, the Cure, the Violent Femmes, Patti Smith, Stone Temple Pilots, and Deftones, to name a few. But none of these live acts compared to their number-one-with-a-bullet: the best live show they’ve ever seen was a Cranberries cover band called Ocean Spray.
The LA-to-New York rock outfit Momma are kind of like a really great cover band. Not literally—the songs they perform are originals—but I’m far from the first person to point out that Momma are a bit derivative, including the band members themselves. Their breakthrough 2022 record Household Name used a ’90s alt-rock sound as a vehicle for self-aware pastiche. Opener “Rip-Off” leaned into its self-deprecating title with slacker nonchalance, while other tracks dropped cheeky lyrical references to the Smashing Pumpkins, Pavement, and Liz Phair. Even the record’s title seemed to be a comment on Momma’s phantom nostalgia for the indie-rock feeding frenzy of the ’90, asking what happens when the kind of rock star you’re trying to be doesn’t really exist anymore.
During the album cycle for Household Name’s follow-up, Welcome to My Blue Sky, Momma have claimed that they don’t want to be written off as just another ’90s nostalgia act. The way they incorporate their ’90s influences isn’t nearly as innovative or experimental as say, Wednesday or feeble little horse—bands pulling from similar strains of sound to create something new and genre-agnostic—but Momma’s songs are catchier and more clever than those of their similarly-leaning contemporaries. As far as ’90s nostalgia acts go, Momma are one of the best around. And who among us can’t resist a well-made knockoff?
“Can I wish it away? / I never thought that before.”
Those are the words that open Welcome to My Blue Sky, exemplary of the kind of record that latches onto the kernels of truth and profundity inside every cliché—the kind of songs that’ll have you exclaiming, “This is gonna be the best summer ever!” and truly meaning it. Welcome to My Blue Sky is a summer album and a road album. Momma’s bandleaders—vocalists, guitarists, and songwriters Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman—have said that the record was inspired largely by the events between the summers of 2022 and 2023, particularly their first-ever headline tour, a run of shows supporting Weezer, and the endings of both of their then-longterm relationships. Blue Sky is a record that embraces the “anything goes”-ness of both life on the road and summertime, situations that tend to fry people’s brains and allow them to give in to their wildest impulses. Momma embrace that recklessness gleefully, admitting, “I’m fucking up my life” and “Let’s tell all our friends we’re making a mess” on Blue Sky’s choruses.
Bitter, shoegazey standouts like “Rodeo” and “Last Kiss” subvert the trope of a rock star longing for their sweetheart back home. The former’s chorus begs to be cut loose from the tether of a suffocating relationship back home over a searing shred; the latter twists the knife, asking, “Did you feel it in my last kiss? / I don’t want you.” The ravenous “I Want You (Fever)” is basically Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” for college radio DJs, as Weingarten and Friedman replace bright synths with buzzy, revving guitars to deliver its instructions for letting someone down easy. “Really can’t believe you didn’t tell her / Do you think she knows we’re back together? / Everyone can see what this is all about / We’re the talk of the town!” goes the pre-chorus, before getting even more direct in its instructions: “Pick up and leave her / I want you, fever.” On the record’s back half, the more apologetic title track juxtaposes roadside Americana with reflections on the strain a musicians’s lifestyle can put on a relationship (“Wanna start a new life / With someone who fits into mine / Jesus still loves you / So says the highway sign”).
“Stay All Summer” is the nostalgic, sun-drenched song that Momma were born to write, each beat perfectly placed for maximum catchiness without being so polished it loses its character. “I would stall and stay all summer babe, if you want me to,” Weingarten sighs, dropping yet another sly Pavement reference, before trading lines with Friedman like they do on almost all of their best material. “Can we cut to the part / Where we say how we feel?” they sing, finishing each other’s sentences. The musical chemistry of Momma’s tag-teaming bandleaders is perhaps their greatest asset, a quality they share with forebears like Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, Lush’s Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson, or Kim and Kelley Deal of the Breeders. In all that Friedman and Weingarten have inherited from their influences, this spot-on synchronicity is their most precious heirloom.
“New Friend” is where reality sets in, as Momma go acoustic for a reflective, comedown ballad about the aftermath of a whirlwind romance. Here, mellowing-out works in their favor, unlike other slower tracks on the album—like “How to Breathe” and “Take Me With You,” which drag down the momentum that other, more energized tracks have built up. On the former, Friedman sings of a secret, forbidden love—“She taught my body how to breathe”—but their delivery lacks the passion or urgency necessary to really sell the song’s central romance. “Take Me With You” is pretty but forgettable filler and, as it sits in the aftermath of the sticky, three-song run of “Bottle Blonde,” “Ohio All The Time,” and “Welcome to My Blue Sky,” it’s glaring just how little this track rises to meet the attitude that Momma are often serving.
If Welcome to My Blue Sky is a “road record,” then the closing track—“My Old Street”—is its homecoming. Momma, exhausted from tour and begging to be buried under the streets where they grew up, return to their childhood homes and families and meditate on the sacrifices their parents made for them. It feels like a memory of mine from two summers ago, when I put Household Name on the aux during the final 45 minutes of a two-day drive from Denver to Portland. In a moment of perfect serendipity, we ended up pulling into the driveway during the final notes of “No Bite,” the evening sun just starting to descend, making the sky glow a soft, hazy orange. This is how Welcome to My Blue Sky feels at its best—derivative and maybe even clichéd, but totally cinematic and in its own way, perfect.
Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, New York, currently based in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work has appeared in The Alternative, Merry-Go-Round Magazine, Post-Trash, Swim Into The Sound and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.
