The Momma show was a subdued, spasmodic experience. The Calabasas, California, band, now based in Brooklyn, played Philly’s Union Transfer on the local leg of their international album release tour. Their new record, Welcome to My Blue Sky, is an infidelity-fueled highway ride through mid-20s love and loss. The live performance skirted the scenic route, instead racing towards an awkward crashout by the lead guitarist at the end of the night.
Momma’s music is full of formulaic tracks laden with tongue-in-cheek lyrics written by high school friends Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten. Their youthful shtick of ambitious desire and painful inexperience is balanced by the pair’s seemingly god-given talent for designing clever hooks bookmarked by easy double-entendres. They’ve got the kind of effortless writing chops that the music industry circles around like hawks to eat up and spit out into Spotify streams.
They kicked off their set list with the first song from their album, “Sincerely.” “Can I wish it away/ I never thought that before/ Please don’t beg me to stay/ ‘cause I’m outside the door,” the lyrics hustle forward, telling the common story of leaving a lover behind. The two-stanza piece is terse and to-the-point. The band is interested in the efficiency of feeling: “No return address/ I love you to death/ but I’m outside the door.”
Their next song, “I Want You (Fever),” is just as rushed and broken. “Pick up and leave her/ I want you/ Fever,” the duo sing hurriedly. “Locked and loaded/ I’m your bullet/ Pull the trigger/ Don’t be shy/ Let her down/ It’ll feel good.” Later numbers, like “How to Breathe,” are less sociopathic but still overstuffed with emotional intensity: “She is the sunrise/ Send me to her skies/ I’ll give her my everything/ She taught my body how to breathe.”
The whole project feels a little insensitive and inexplicable. Both songwriters, who perform with Preston Fulks on drums and Aron Kobayashi Ritch on bass, have spoken openly about cheating on their partners while on the road. Unlike the bandmates’ candid interviews, the songs don’t examine bigger ideas of complex guilt very closely, but are concerned instead with packaging impulsive emotions into neatly crafted, three-minute sprints of shoegaze. The music is true and pulsing with self-discovery, but also plagued by self-centeredness.
The band’s following is just as self-righteously jejune. “Mama! Mama!” men shouted in babydoll voices throughout the night. (I’m included in the low-emotional maturity target audience; I laughed.) The singers were quiet between songs, saying little with the exception of the spontaneous “photo shoot!” and “shots!” after news broke that one of their sound engineer’s sisters had just given birth. Around halfway through the night, I noticed the bassist and guitarist exchange words; suddenly Friedman’s performative nail biting and eye rolls, displays of girlish innocence, turned to grimaces. She seemed nearly furious for the rest of the night before dropping her guitar and softly storming off stage after the last song.
The crowd wondered amongst ourselves whether a fight had occurred. Later on Instagram, I saw Friedman post a story declaring: “If you are a man over the age of 40 and are not accompanying your underage daughter can you please not stand front row at our shows. Esp if you’re not gonna sing a single lyric and just stare at us the whole time. Thx.” Could a stray Gen-X fan have been enough to drain the group’s energy?
The band’s been branding their latest release with bloated silver heart lockets, a strain of puffy jewelry which has been trending in recent years probably because of its combination of maximalism and ostensible sentimentality. Blown-up versions of the necklaces dripped from the stage on Friday night, with the lights oscillating between red and blue like hell and heaven breaking repeatedly in eerily well-timed bipolar fashion. Momma’s ‘90s sound teetered between faddish and old-school like an angry see-saw all evening.
The closest we got to understanding Momma’s abrupt sensibilities was their culminating song, “My Old Street.” Whereas the album’s other songs burn the past in favor of serenading a passionate future, the last track hits on the upbringing that primed the rock band to hasten through the heartbreak of abandonment towards beauty: “It’s so hard to leave it/ I miss it but I’ve moved on/ From the driveway, the front yard/ And the let downs I was raised on/ My dad is getting older/ Got a lot on his shoulder/ Their world is getting smaller/ But they did it all for their young daughter.
“And my old street/ Just bury me/ I hear it scream/ Just bury me/ My old street/ Where you can bury me/ I hear it scream/ It wants to bury me.”
