Adult Mom’s debut LP begins with a song called "Be Your Own 3am", a title that obliquely recalls Xiu Xiu’s 2006 song "Hello from Eau Claire". On that track, Caralee McElroy made a rare vocal appearance to sing, "I can weep through my own midnights" and "I know it’s stupid to dream/ That you might think of me as a man." Like Xiu Xiu in their softer, more reflective moments, Adult Mom, the Purchase, N.Y. guitar rock project helmed by songwriter Steph Knipe, scrawls gentle notes to self all over their music. Momentary Lapse of Happily externalizes many of the same queer anxieties that manifest in Xiu Xiu’s work, but in a lighter, warmer cadence more reminiscent of Knipe’s contemporaries in Eskimeaux, Girlpool, or Elvis Depressedly.
Knipe writes and sings with a dose of humor that balances lyrics like "one day I’ll set fire to your car" (from "2012"). The violence in their words isn’t a joke, but humor helps temper the incendiary impulse behind it. Sometimes you have to choose whether to laugh or scream, and only one kind of outburst is considered socially acceptable. But with Adult Mom’s anger comes a fierce yearning for growth. On "Survival", Knipe sings, "I survive because I have died," as if shedding identities like old snakeskins were the only way to keep moving forward unhunted. Often there’s a bitterness ringing the words, but also an ember of hope for the future at their core.
Though much of Momentary Lapse plays like the residue of deeply private self-soothing ("I hold my own hands in crowds," Knipe sings on "Be Your Own 3am"), Adult Mom nods to friendship and communal healing throughout. Band banter breaks up some tracks, while Knipe references their friends by name in certain lyrics. Adult Mom teeters on the line of needing companionship and also fearing it, of needing to externalize feelings while remaining unsure of whether those feelings can be understood or even heard. Momentary Lapse is an anxious record, and at times a tentative one, as though Knipe felt stifled in the process of articulating just how stifled they feel. "It is okay to feel doubt/ But just know you’re gonna find a way out," they sing on "Told Ya So" between cheery strikes of keyboard. It’s one of many songs on the album that feels like a love letter to a younger self, something that can never actually be sent to its intended recipient, but can be reframed for a stranger out there who needs to hear it.
