Mother Earth's Plantasia

Over the last 15 years or so, British Columbia indie rockers Mother Mother have kept a pretty steady ship, but it wasn’t until 2020 that the band caught fire, when a whole new generation of fans discovered their catalog via TikTok. On Inside, their eighth LP, you can feel them adding fuel to that spark. A self-described “pandemic album,” Inside bristles with pent-up cabin-fever energy and a yearning for release, coming in swinging for the fences on the vein-popping rallying cries “Two” and “Sick of the Silence.” But whenever those in-the-red histrionics threaten to get overwhelming, singer-songwriter Ryan Guldemond dials it back for moments of intimate and contemplative sweetness, such as “Forgotten Souls” and the singsong “Pure Love,” rendered even sweeter by the genderless blurring of his theatrical vocals with those of sister Molly Guldemond and keyboardist Jasmin Parkin.

The forthcoming fifth album by the international phenomenon that is Mother’s Cake sees the psych-rock trio present itself in suitably appropriate fashion: sky high, far out yet still very much down to earth. In preparation for over a year and recorded during a series of sleep-deprived three day sessions, the group concentrate on the essentials on the ten new songs that comprise ‘Cyberfunk!’, bundling their raw live energy into a dynamically dense release that sounds like vintage madness of the best possible kind and fits the moment in perfect fashion.

Mother Gong's first album Mother was released in 1978 and the band found Gilli Smyth collaborating with many musicians including Harry Williamson and various friends and family including on this album Owl In The Tree from 1990, former partner Daevid Allen. The album is split into two halves and both Allen and Smyth work well within the limitations set out by vinyl bearing in mind that the days of vinyl made for a more convenient division, which is defined, by the individual styles of both Allen and Smyth. The album is a mix of both styles including Allen's blissed out space rocker style and Smyth's more laid back fairy tale recitations and a smattering of typically Gong like instrumental work.

Mother Gong is basically the partnership of singer Gilli Smyth and multi-instrumentalist Harry Williamson along with various friends and family, including saxophonist Robert Calvert, who essays some lovely solos on "Unseen Ally" and "La Dea Madri." Their former Gong bandmate Daevid Allen, as the credits humorously suggest, is "a collection of sub-personalities held together by their friend"; the sub-personalities on display on his half of the split album The Owl and the Tree are that of the Incredible String Band-like psych-folk gnome (a word that he pronounces with the G in the charming "The Owly Song") and the blissed-out space rocker on the lovely 14-and-a-half-minute multi-part suite "I Am My Own Lover." Mother Gong's half of the record is equally fine, a combination of prettily meandering instrumentals and Smyth's familiar fairy tale recitations…