A five-person band releasing its fifth album merits some level of expectation—if only for desperate critics scrambling for a storyline about a small Canadian band. Unfortunately, Mother Mother, an indie rock band out of British Columbia, falls short of any artistic cohesion with its ambitious but disjointed fifth studio album, Very Good Bad Thing.
The ongoing conversation surrounding the ‘indie rock’ genre has led to blurred boundaries regarding its definition. Mother Mother tries to buck this trend with its latest album by tackling multiple styles of indie rock, to the detriment of any possible flow to the record.
The opening track, “Get Out the Way,” tempers any expectation for a modern indie sound by kicking the listener in the ear with rough and grating guitar riffs that are more punk than pop rock. Played alongside the electric guitar are haunting keyboard chords that set the table for a grunge/punk-style album.
However, any expected continuity is shattered by the next song, “Monkey Tree (UK Mix),” in which a pop/synth sound dominates to produce a shimmering, upbeat track. Freedom is the message here, as aired through the chorus: “You wanna be a free bird/ You wanna be a free lover, see/ You gotta run from the shepherd/ Run, run away with me.”
Yet the listener is immediately grounded by the following two tracks, “Modern Love” and “Reaper Man,” which sport the lyrics “Yeah it’s true I fell for you,” and “Oh yeah I’m a reaper man/ Every good thing, I kill it good,” respectively. The lyrical contrasts are compounded by the different musical styles used—grunge, and then synth, followed by electronic, which is tailed by plodding punk. This creates a disorienting and frustrating feel to Very Good Bad Thing.
Individually, the tracks shine as examples of modern indie rock’s versatility; together they are a haphazard blizzard of indie rock ambition. In an iTunes era of easily consumed singles, an album’s greatest selling-point is its cohesion and continuity. Very Good Bad Thing is exactly as it purports to be—very good tracks tossed together to produce a bad album.
