Here’s something I’ve been listening to a lot lately. The first song I heard from Momma was “Biohazard”, which has a main riff out of some slacker indie song of recent vintage, but the chorus is a wordless blast of grungier guitars. Along with the dual vocalists singing simple harmonies in a laid-back (almost to the point of boredom) fashion it made for an intriguing combination. So I went ahead and checked out the album it came from, and now it’s my most-listened-to album so far this year.
The 90’s influences I caught are even more pronounced on other songs. “Bug House” sounds like Toadies a little bit? Maybe some Dinosaur Jr. in other songs? But every time I want to say it’s just a grunge throwback there’s something in there that reminds me more of Kurt Vile.
It shouldn’t be that surprising that any throwback influences are tempered by more recent sounds; judging from their promotional pictures the members of Momma are young enough to make me feel vaguely embarrassed for listening to them. Their drummer wears a Zero shirt and is younger than Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. This is the way of music fandom unless you stop listening to new stuff altogether, and I’m not there yet.
“Ready Runner” reminds me most strongly of Dirty Dishes (specifically “Androgynous Love Song”), who were active just 5 years ago or so. But at that time I thought Dirty Dishes were notably 90’s-sounding, even putting them on a little playlist to that effect:
So let me acknowledge that it’s weird to say that Two of Me has some strong 90’s grunge influences, and part of my evidence for that is a song that came out in 2015, but hopefully it makes sense after that preamble.
Two of Me is brief, and the songs on it are almost all right around 3 minutes, so at the micro and macro levels it goes by quickly. In a way that’s disappointing, but it all leaves me wanting more, and ultimately that means I liked it a lot. Check it out.
This is so perfectly up my alley right now, thanks for sharing! I've been listening to Rat Boys, Bachelor, Japanese Breakfast, and Soccer Mommy a lot lately. Good summer music.