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Talk about making up for lost time. The Mommyeads\u2019 initial run lasted from the late 1980s to nearly the end of the \u201890s; that period was followed by a decade-long hiatus. When they returned in 2008, the Brooklyn-based group embarked upon a two-track path, releasing new music alongside reissues and archival sets of their earlier works. The Mommyheads\u2019 work is characterized by attention to detail, finely-crafted ear candy songs, and a general cleverness.<\/p>\n
The group is often \u2013 too<\/i> often, perhaps \u2013 compared to XTC. That has less to do with them sounding at all like Swindon\u2019s finest, and more to do with their baroque sensibility and unfailing knack for memorable melodies. But on their latest, Genius Killer<\/i>, The Mommyheads move confidently in another direction, while maintaining everything that has made them special up to now.<\/p>\n
Listen to \u201cImpulse Item\u201d and you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’re hearing a previously-unheard track from Electirc Light Orchestra\u2019s prime period. You know, the era when they reconciled their Beatles fixations and combined them with original ideas, and before they turned into the musical equivalent of a wind-up toy. In other words, Face the Music<\/i> and A New World Record<\/i>-era.<\/p>\n
But even that comparison is too limiting for The Mommyheads. On the title track, they bear some similarity to Supergrass. There\u2019s a trip-hop meets Simon and Garfunkel vibe to \u201cShe\u2019s a Fighter.\u201dThe group excels at heartfelt, soulful balladry on \u201cWe Almost Lost it All.\u201d They get all electro-funky on \u201cDistill Your Love Into That Dying Light,\u201d sounding for all the world like a \u201870s soul group raised on a steady diet of Stevie Wonder and P-Funk.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdealist\u201d is a moody, percussion-heavy excursion that bears similarities to Joe Jackson and (for once here) XTC. \u201cPrivilege\u201d rocks hard, swinging and swaggering. \u201cBittersweet\u201d combines all of the assets on display throughout the record into five minutes of catchy and compelling music. The stuttering \u201cOne and the Same\u201d is intentionally skeletal in arrangement; the approach draws the listener closer, deeper into The Mommyheads\u2019 world. The record concludes with \u201cFirst Five Seconds,\u201d an ambitious, subtly progressive composition that again combines The Mommyheads myriad assets into a single track.<\/p>\n
This group is on a roll. Now that they\u2019ve (seemingly) worked their way through all of the archival material, the focus is back on new music. And as the Mommyeads hurtle toward their 40th<\/sup> anniversary, they\u2019re showing themselves to be at the top of their game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Talk about making up for lost time. The Mommyeads\u2019 initial run lasted from the late 1980s to nearly the end of the \u201890s; that period was followed by a decade-long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,49,51,62,65],"tags":[3626],"class_list":["post-23399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-new-release","category-pop","category-rawk","category-review","tag-mommyheads","cat-39-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23401,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23399\/revisions\/23401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}