Album Premiere: Momma—’Interloper’
Posted: by The Editor
The sound of bedroom-pop duo Momma, comprised of high school friends Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, owes as much to the music of Liz Phair and Girlpool as it does to sleepovers and stressing out about college applications. On their debut album Interloper (out 5/25 via Danger Collective Records), the pair capture the melodrama and humdrum of adolescent life, distilling it down to its marrow. An interloper is someone who feels like they don’t belong, and the album flourishes with the pensive and sardonic feelings of being an outsider.
The bulk of record’s lyrics could be mistaken for @sosadtoday tweets—“Capable Type” features the line, “I can’t show you my insides / I’m a machine and I don’t cry.” Similarly, there’s a naivety and roughness to the production, as songs like “Clear” and “Signed Hunter” carry the same lo-fi charm that catapulted (Sandy) Alex G and Hovvdy from Bandcamp obscurity. The simplicity of the instrumentals allows guitar lines to weave and contort in every which way imaginable, evoking the stylings of 90’s Pacific Northwest groups like Built to Spill, Sleater-Kinney, and Modest Mouse. Whereas those bands would allow enough space for a riff to slowly burn out over the course of several minutes, Momma’s tracks usually end around the three-minute mark, smothering the fire before it destroys everything around it.
Tracks like “Caterpillar” and “Belong On The Bed” could have easily been turned into seven-minute extended jam sessions in the vein of Perfect from Now On, but their brevity is necessary for maintaining the foundation of which the record was built upon. Interloper is the sonic equivalent of passing notes back and forth with someone during class; short bursts of off-the-cuff honesty shared exclusively between two people in a language entirely their own.
Stream Interloper in its entirety below, ahead of its release this Friday:
Interloper is out 5/25 via Danger Collective Records.
—
Michael Brooks | @nomichaelbrooks
The Alternative is ad-free and 100% supported by our readers. If you’d like to help us produce more content and promote more great new music, please consider donating to our Patreon page, which also allows you to receive sweet perks like free albums and The Alternative merch.
