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After ten studio albums, it’s almost a certainty that a band have found their sound, style, and are completely themselves. In Nostalgia, MOTHER MOTHER know exactly who they are, and reminisce on how far they have come. When catching up with singer Ryan Guldemond, he explains how they revel in the moment just before release, and what they hope listeners will take from their most recent album.
“There’s a special thing just before you release the music, where you get to dream about how well it could possibly do, and it’s limitless, that dreamscape. You just don’t know, but you get to wonder.” While of course, reality isn’t exactly what they conjured up in their minds, but with their adoring, committed fanbase, it isn’t too far off. Ryan says, “what I love about music is it helps me feel more like myself for inexplicable reasons. It’s like ah, there I am. Whoever that is. So, I hope the music provides that for people to feel closer to their own heart, their own truth, just makes them feel a little more comfortable, or like they make a little more sense in their own skin.” This is probably what makes everything the Canadian indie rock band release so electric, so the chances this album will achieve that are high.
What is now a full-length album started out as a poem, titled Nostalgia. Ryan explains the feeling of smelling fresh cut grass and being sent straight back to your childhood, and thus, Nostalgia was born. While there isn’t much of the original poem left in the album, it all began with a feeling, and a rumination. From there, the band spend a lot of time looking back through their archives, evaluating old songs and writing new ones inspired by everything that came before. Ryan describes their music as a portal, where he is able to time travel back to all the different stages of his life.
“I love having this medium in life to help me along and reflect on what’s going on, both within and in the world. And then you think about the road ahead and all the unborn songs and how they might sound and change to reflect the unknown changes that are coming.” The album in itself has a lot to say, a chaotic mix of vulnerability, humour, satire, heightened emotions and social commentary. It’s feels like a lot to fit into one place, but the band don’t seem to blink an eye at this. Ryan explains, “you think about people, they’re pretty multifaceted, with their emotional range and their opinions. So, I don’t see why an album shouldn’t mirror that. It makes sense to me that the body of work is a bit schizophrenic.”
Over the course of their career, it seems inevitable that, like almost every band, MOTHER MOTHER would struggle with writer’s block at some point. Ryan explains that a number of years ago, the need for external success and recognition, combined with his own fear of failure, hindered his music in an extreme way. The writing started to dry up, and when it did come, it was being dragged down and polluted by this anxiety and dread. Fortunately, Ryan had some kind of philosophical shift, where he cast away the anxiety, and “really honed in on this truth that the creative act is for joy, and for connection. It has nothing to do with numbers or worth.” While this sounds simple, it was really a change that happened gradually over time, and to Ryan’s credit, with a lot of work and effort. Naturally, the music that has come since has benefited hugely from this realisation. “Now I just find that everything is bursting with creative springboards and inspiration and a plethora of songs that need to be written and there’s just never enough time to do so. It’s like the opposite of writer’s block, none of it needs to be great. That has just opened up the craft in such a robust and abundant way.” Consequentially, their experience writing this most recent album was rewarding, and lovely. For Ryan and the other members of the band, they were able to get so much from writing Nostalgia, and are in turn, incredibly proud of what has come from it, which in the end is all that really matters.
The benefit of writing and releasing so many albums that MOTHER MOTHER are now discovering is that it is almost impossible to not know exactly what works, and what is needed from the process. They knew they wanted the record to sound natural, and to do so, they had to take their time. From start to finish, Nostalgia took over a year to make, and the band had to almost manufacture a natural sound, as if it was all played together, at once. Where everything was really compartmentalised, and cut together, the band were able to create an organic sound through taking the time to really listen, and picking apart every song, redoing each one over and over until they were right. There is always a risk in making an album, that even after everything, it won’t be the same at the end, and that the finished product will have mutated a little bit in release. Ryan explains, “sometimes, you listen to it, and you’re like, ‘what happened to my baby, it changed. As hard as I tried to retain its innocence, it got bruised somehow.’ It’s common, and it’s heart breaking. But this album, it just felt more like it ended where it began, and that is a good feeling.”
Nostalgia is set for release on June 6th via Parlophone/Warner Records. Pre-orders are available now and can be purchased here. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS122 here:
For more information on MOTHER MOTHER like their official page on Facebook.
The post Mother Mother: Nostalgia – Ending Where it Began appeared first on Distorted Sound Magazine.
