Long time friends and collaborators Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten are back with a new album as Momma, which sounds straight out of the mid ’90s but takes place in the summer of 2022, when Momma were on their first-ever tour. More than just chronicling the breakups and new romances of that time period, their best songs shimmer with summer’s potential and immediacy, pairing easy harmonies with the punch of slacker rock. They also expand their sound into other cornerstones of that era, delivering shoegazey riffs on “Last Kiss” and hushed acoustic tenderness on “Take Me With You.”
“Welcome to My Blue Sky” is an album that’s easy to like, and even easier to imagine blasting on a road trip with your best friend sitting shotgun. The second full-length from Momma bottled up hot July days defined by cicada buzz, cheap booze, and go-nowhere rubber-burning. It sounded like a coming-of-age movie and a gonzo-style road trip while also transcending the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-’90s pitfall once and for all.
Built around the song writing core of Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, Momma came in hot with 2022’s breakout “Household Name“. And while their love of joyrides (so many lyrics about cars) and ’90s bubble grunge never waned, they did soften their focus on “Welcome to My Blue Sky”, creating a more insular album that resonated because of the dialogue between its two personalities. Friedman and Weingarten were likely the outcast kids scrawling lyrics in their notebooks at the back of their respective classrooms, finding each other wordlessly in the hallway between periods. And when they aren’t answering each other with words—inside jokes and knowingly kitschy sweet-nothings—their guitars finish each other’s sentences.
These riffs can flutter and waver like butterflies or slam you across the room á la Marty McFly with that jet-engine-sized amp. “Blue Sky” is always purposeful but never feels laboured-over, glossy but not airbrushed. It’s sometimes the stuff of movie scripts but also founded on shared experiences and connections that are totally real. I guess occasionally life is just that cinematic.
The Fat Angel Sings 