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.

Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes is a new full-length by Philadelphia based artist, poet, and musician, Camae Ayewa, who performs under the name Moor Mother.

Gilli Smyth first started performing with Soft Machine in the sixties when the band played their mixture of poetry/music gigs. Gilli became more active as a performer following the formation of Gong with her partner Daevid Allen following his departure from the aforementioned Soft Machine in 1968. Following her departure with Allen from Paris following the Paris riots of late 1968 Gilli along with Allen decamped to Spain although the duo once again returned to France in 1969 where the second edition of Gong became a reality. Gilli was the only female in the band originally and developed her "Space Whisper" which became an integral part of the Gong sound.

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…

Mother's Finest tried to smash the embargo blocking black rock acts with this live record. It was the closest any album came to actually conveying the kind of nonstop excitement, spontaneity, and unpredictability of their live shows, although it also showed how vocally erratic they could be in performance. The failure of a band that had as exciting a vocalist as Joyce Kennedy and did both solid rock and fine grinding funk proved one of the '80s' more puzzling questions. It couldn't just be attributed to racism either, because Mother's Finest actually did better among white audiences than black ones.