Momma
Welcome to My Blue Sky
POLYVINYL
There’s something totally freeing about fucking up—not in spite of the havoc it inspires, but because of it. Feelings could get hurt, relationships might erupt, a version of yourself may be gone forever, but before there’s the sobering reality of accountability, there’s the thrill of possibility: novel feelings could arise, new relationships might blossom, an unknown piece of yourself may be unearthed. “Never been bad but I’ll try / I’m putting up a fight / I’m fucking up my life / I’m running to you, right?” Momma proclaimed on their single “Ohio All the Time” last fall. The bursting guitars and shimmering backing vocals mirror the stubborn, carefree sentiment that hits like a water balloon in the face on a blazing summer day. Their latest full-length Welcome to My Blue Sky further carries this liberated bless-this-mess energy with the soft, cheeky smile of dream pop.
On 2022’s Household Name, Momma had fun with legitimizing cliches of rock ’n’ roll fame as a young group who already understood that an inflamed ego isn’t particularly compatible with happiness. The record’s acclaim resulted in the quartet touring with iconic alt-rock bands like Weezer and Death Cab for Cutie—ironically, their tongue-in-cheek project manifested as their present reality. Thankfully, Welcome to My Blue Sky isn’t a commentary on their newfound fame or even necessarily a reflection on becoming public figures in the indie music sphere, but instead a classic coming-of-age story where extreme new environments result in life-changing decisions that bring co-vocalists Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman closer to truer versions of themselves. Blue Sky demonstrates that they understand the complicated nature of making mistakes, creating a healthy balance between excitement and guilt on an album that feels insular and vulnerable, as well as a go-to soundtrack for driving on the highway, windows down.
Blue Sky paints a realistic picture of how love is an energy that’s never created nor destroyed, but shapeshifts through every relationship we build in our lifetimes. “Can we cut to the part when we say how we feel,” Friedman and Weingarten sing on “Stay All Summer” with a teasing delivery reminiscent of pop-punk acts like Boys Like Girls, We the Kings, or Metro Station. “It was really getting old building a house / And there’s someone at home that I forgot about.” The track is a familiar story of being young and chasing after love even if it leaves broken hearts in its wake, but it lacks the melodramatic theatrics that makes this vein of pop-punk so incredibly fun and cathartic. These are bright, zippy tracks whose grunge and pop sensibilities are having an internal conflict, resulting in genial rock lacking true catharsis.
The most memorable moments on Welcome to My Blue Sky are when Momma recognize the complexity of the sacrifices loved ones make for them. Some we force on others, like the slow heartache triggered by infidelity: “You’re paying the cost of my new life / When I hang up, it’s our last goodnight / Don’t try to find me in my blue sky,” the duo whispers at the end of the title track. And some sacrifices come with the nature of that relationship: “Their world is getting smaller / But they did it all for their young daughter,” goes one line on “My Old Street” wherein Momma reflect on their childhood, as well as the shifting perspective of their parents. They look inward while their outside world radically changes, refusing to be wooed by nostalgia. They understand there’s plenty of pain and happiness awaiting them no matter what decisions they might make.
