Mother Mother

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.