Mother Mother

O My Heart

BY Jill LangloisPublished Sep 16, 2008

O My Heart is a worthy name for Vancouver quintet Mother Mother’s second release. The follow-up to 2007’s Touch Up, this record takes the lyrical genius of the first, pushes it beyond all expectations and then pairs it with the band’s trademarked intertwining vocal harmonies. If that combination doesn’t make your musical-loving heart skip a beat, I don’t know what will. Brilliant instrumentation might have another thing to do with your possible impending cardiac arrest while listening to O My Heart. The strings that kick off "Body” not only match perfectly with the staccato voices of brother/sister combo Ryan and Molly Guldemond, and band mate Debra-Jean Creelman but they also take into account the song’s subject matter of feeling completely disjointed and awkward in a body that’s holding you back. And Mother Mother are like that in a sense: seemingly held back by physical restraints yet managing to make their eccentricities work in the most surprising ways.

What direction were you trying to go in when you first started the band?
Ryan: When we first started, I had no idea. I started the band on a whim and the direction just spoke for itself. We didn’t conceive or contrive where we wanted to go; it just had legs and started to define itself the more we got into it. I think now and recently there’s been more of a concerted effort in trying to shape the direction of the band. I think in the past two years, since having released records and getting signed, understanding that a sense of cohesion and unity is valuable when you’re presenting something to the public really stuck.

So when you’re making a record do you have a clear idea of what you want to create?
I think you leave some of it open to fate and spontaneity. Other things you do really try to control and have a clear idea; it’s something that this band aren’t completely experienced in. Essentially we’ve only made one record because this latest record, O My Heart, is a band effort. It was all five of us going into the studio and coming out with an album, whereas Touch Up was a little more scattered in its evolution.
(Last Gang)

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