We all know it started with the ‘Hayloft’ – I mean it really didn’t, not chronologically, but Mother Mother are keenly aware that the song of that name was how they initially reached the ears of so many listeners, partly through its recurring social media success. And so, not only does their latest tour highlight the newly-released Grief Chapter, the band’s ninth LP, it also pays loving tribute to O My Heart, the sophomore effort that remains as a pillar of the band’s creative success.
The Vancouver band arrives as part of a co-headline tour with Cavetown, and MM is up second for the night after a thrilling primer set from Meet Me @ the Altar. The crowd has an unmistakable youthful energy, the kind that finds people making a karaoke session of the pre-set music, phones waving and voices soaring to a dance mix of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ and then Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’, equal excitement at the start of further songs by Avril Lavigne, Surf Curse, and Deftones. Although odd as it may seem at a glance, this sequence is a very representative palette of Mother Mother’s influences and contemporaries – they routinely blend pop sensibility with heavy and chugging riffs, tackling the most serious of subjects with a kind of maximalist sincerity that has resonated through generations of listeners.
The band’s stage is flanked on either side by keyboards housed in steel plating with a mirrored sheen. Singer Ryan Guldemond takes the center of the stage, his sister Molly as well as Jasmin Parkin situating themselves at either silver station. Bassist Mike Young and drummer Ali Siadat are stood and sat, respectively, a bit further back. The crowd knows precisely what they’re in for, oddly enough, in the most literal sense; the band dispensed with surprise and instead leaned into the community experience of being able to sing the songs along together, releasing their setlist for the tour as a playlist on streaming services ahead of time.
Ever a band to keep escalating their craft and subvert expectations, Mother Mother recently crafted, and placed early in their setlist, ‘Hayloft II’. The song does the deeply improbable in how it builds on the original’s structure and narrative, working as a quasi-remix to push the sound to its limits, the changes in the piece reflective of the general changes in musical trends in the time since the release of the first ‘Hayloft’. In addition to refactoring their efforts, they interpolate (local heroes) Pixies’ ‘Where Is My Mind?’ into their brand-new ‘The Matrix’, a defiant repudiation of the “9-5 suicide” people find themselves in. The stage lights all glow green here, a nod to the song’s namesake film, itself a massive cultural touchstone, whose metaphor of human batteries in sedated pods parallels the soul-siphoning drudgery that can be found sitting in a little cubicle, creating value for someone else. The high-flying backing vocals from Molly and Parkin enhance the song’s already-uplifting nature – this theatrical interplay of the male and female vocals, balancing or juxtaposing Ryan with Molly and Jasmin, has always been a core component of MM’s music, no matter what way it’s implemented in any specific tune or era.
Prefacing ‘Problems’, Ryan speaks from the heart to the crowd, saying: “We know this heals something in ourselves and the world… We don’t take this for granted.” They’re more than happy to wear their hearts on their sleeves, embracing the accompanying vulnerability – ‘Explode!’ does what they do best once again, mingling big feelings and talk of death with equally weighty metal-tinged riffs. Guldemond and Young face each other with their instruments on the stage. ‘Body’ is dedicated to “anyone who doesn’t always feel at home in their own skin”, and Ryan situates himself in a lone spotlight at the song’s introduction, this backlight the only illumination onstage, only rendering a silhouette. But when the song kicks off, he heads right for the front of the stage, as close to the audience as possible – Siadat plays this one standing up, and Young joins the two remaining band members on keys. Next is another cut from O My Heart, ‘Sleep Awake’, where Molly takes lead vocals – it contains the line, “I sleep with one hand on my 45, the other ’round my baby’s waist,” the kind of dramatic lyricism that Mother Mother’s music is so often built around.
The next portion of the evening sees everyone shifting around for a lengthy acoustic section. Ryan takes a moment to introduce the band, Siadat settling in behind a small kit stage-left. The acoustic section continues through ‘Ghosting’, ‘Little Pistol’, and ‘It’s Alright’ before Guldemond pauses to reminisce a bit. “We’re an old-as-fuck band,” he says, recalling playing TT the Bear’s Place in nearby Cambridge for 10 years every time they came to the area, that small space (now reborn as Sonia) far tinier than the huge concert hall that (somehow) fits into the side of Fenway Park; it’s safe to say that they’ve grown considerably since that time, but the acoustic section is a nod to their earlier days. ‘Oh Ana’ prompts huge cheers, and ‘Wrecking Ball’ is “dedicated to the dreamers” – still acoustic, with plinky interlocked guitars that have often been so iconic. That said, everything the band does still sounds huge in the decidedly vertical space, and during this piece, they transition from acoustic instruments back to their original gear and positions onstage for the big finish, which leads into the final segment of the evening.
Following ‘Verbatim’, a very stylistically prescient song all things considered, the much-anticipated conclusion comes in the form of the original ‘Hayloft’. But there’s an embedded extra here too, with a verse and chorus pulled from Lana Del Rey’s famous ‘Video Games’ sidled in near the end of the song before it explodes back into the last rapid-fire staccato hook. It’s the perfect tie-off to a varied and excellent communal experience of the band’s discography, something that would be transcendent on its own but on this particular evening is both preceded and succeeded by other excellent performances, in one of the most celebratory nights to grace MGM Fenway in recent memory.
Photos and Review by Collin Heroux
