There are just so many things that it's possible to assume about Mother Mother as one digs into their fourth album, The Sticks. Those who became familiar with the band courtesy of their delirious and hyperactive breakthrough album, 2011's Eureka, will immediately assume that Mother Mother has elected to follow the “make a dark record after the breakthrough to frighten off fair-weather fans” route which was so fashionable at the end of last century, but that's really not likely. The truth is that, while Eureka was a watershed moment for Mother Mother, the band has never made the same record twice before – or even two that were particularly similar, really – and the same tradition is upheld by The Sticks; the catch is that, now, the band is continuing as they always did in front of a far larger crowd of listeners.
…And what a change this record is for Mother Mother. After some eery and disconcerting piano and icy gang vocals while will see listeners actively trying to bat down a few frightened hairs on the backs of their necks, Mother Mother lifts the monolithic beat from Led Zeppelin's “When The Levee Breaks” to up the doomy and grimly inevitable vibes for the album's title track. There, listeners will start to really get a sense of unease when singer Ryan Guldemond sings outside of his register (actually hitting several of the same melodies as keyboardist/singers Molly Guldemond and Jasmin Parkin) and thereby adds a bit of tension to the listening experience rather than simply swaggering along with the bombastic, B-52s croon he had on Eureka.
When Guldemond does reassert his voice on “Let's Fall In Love,” he's still careful to keep the darkness up front as sardonically twists Cole Porter's 1928 hit into a Bowie-esque and noir-ish electro-clashing monster, and then upholds that energy through the rest of the record. That design doesn't work badly, but it certainly isn't always great; songs like “Business Man,” “Infinitessimal” and “Cry Forum” all try to breathe new chills into listeners as Molly Guldemond and Jasmin Parkin keep swirls of torrential synths running through each song and add some dark and unnerving back-up vocal melodies to the mix for color but, on each of the songs in between those (“Dread In My Heart,” “Happy,” “Love It Dissipates” and “Little Pistol” particularly), Mother Mother tries to stretch out stylisically with results ranging from great to hysterically poor. Truly, the greater moments are fantastic – “Dread In My Heart” and “Little Pistol” retreat back to the terrain that Mother Mother captured before Eureka as it band informs the song with a new more Southern gothic strains, while “Love It Dissipates” manages to balance electro, pop and gothic folk in a way that no one has really ever succeeded in doing before – but the failures (including the truly bad “Bit By Bit” and questionable “Latter Days”) come pretty close to overshadowing any positive ground the band might make here. That sort of back-and-forth movement can get a bit tiresome and, because of it, The Sticks eventually becomes pretty static and feels perfectly average by default.
So is this album a success or a failure? The answer isn't quite so black and white as that, because, like Schrodinger's cat (which one has to assume is both dead and alive) it has both great and awful elements interspersed throughout its run-time and the amounts of good and bad are of equal measure. That makes things (again, like the record itself) needlessly complicated, so let's put it this way: those expecting another instantly gratifying listen like Eureka will not find it on The Sticks – it is a record which can grow on listeners, but it is not perfect. That said, as long as a listener is willing to work hard, they'll at least get some reward out of The Sticks.
Artist:
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Download:
Mother Mother – “Let's Fall In Love” – [mp3]
Album:
Mother Mother's The Sticks will be released on September 18, 2012 by Last Gang Records. It is not yet available for pre-order on Amazon, but it is available for pre-order here on iTunes.
