Momma come of age on Welcome To My Blue Sky

The Brooklyn-via-California four-piece face the challenge of succeeding a third album that uncannily captured 90s ennui, despondency and freewheeling innocence with a subtlety many of their peers only aspire to. Principal songwriters Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten evoke and excavate their respective pasts, pairing tales of fractured relationships with wistful vocal harmonies and ear-burrowing guitar hooks, alt-rock tropes that were amped up to eleven on 2022's breakthrough record Household Name.

With support stints for Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse in the wake of their 2023 Coachella set, Welcome to My Blue Sky sees Momma continuing to deep dive, at least sonically, into the neighbouring worlds of indie rock and grunge. Tracking in the footprints of its Smashing Pumpkins-nodding predecessor with a similar focus on maxed out Americana, grappling between an understated sense of inevitability and the need for crushing emotionally primed melodies, the slacker rock revivalists’ fourth album retreats into a faltered comfort zone, exploring the illusive safety of nostalgia undercut with the erring pangs of life and paralleled layers of weariness.

Lyrics dart between coming-of-age ephemera and a deep-seated sense of retrospection that extends beyond genre conventions on their latest LP. Friedman and Weingarten glance back to small-town origins, proving at their most unfiltered in chronicling coming-of-age hopes, associated turbulence and youthful ideals traded for a resignation to the passage of time: “It’s so hard to leave it / I miss it but I’ve moved on / From the driveway, the front yard / And the let downs I was raised on”. The latter hinges album closer “My Old Town” in its rear-view mirror perception of yearning pitted with the unravelling hardships of formative years, the adjacency of pain and varnished nostalgia locked into the past: “And my old street / Just bury me / I hear it scream.”

Faded blue skies and tarnished picket fences dot Momma’s lyrical landscape, home truths and defeated expectations subverting the dreams sold to the self. “Rodeo” taps into this in its pastoral brush of tumbling hooks and rolling vocals, the sensation of being stuck in a revolving cycle of unfulfilling relationships explored. “Stay All Summer” joins the latter in its scaled down tribute to sun-dappled on/off romances, cynicism and affection for the past twinned in a bittersweet union. “Last Kiss” soars in a sea of rattling riffs, arena-destined bursts of euphoria that forefront the band’s dualling interplay between bucolic pace and abrupt crescendos - producer/bassist Aron Kobayashi Ritch and drummer Preston Fulks lending further momentum.

Friedman and Weingarten’s friendship remains an ever-constant reference point in their most confessionally open offering yet, the core chemistry between the two leads pulling the disparate and shared pasts together in a unified voice. The shadow of Gen-X alt-rock staples such as Veruca Salt and the Breeders continue to loom large, but, as with the three other albums to Momma’s credit, a niched balance is reached in lending their own singular stories to such spaces.