Momma - Welcome To My Blue Sky

Momma’s fourth LP opens with a promise: “Anyone that calls / Should know I don’t look back anymore,”
sing the Brooklyn-based four-piece over the solemn procession of ‘Sincerely’; “No return address, I love you to death / But I’m outside the door.” Yet, like all wistful romanticists - contradictory, lovelorn, poetic and messy in their ways - looking back is exactly what they do. But ‘Welcome to My Blue Sky’ is a record of duality; here, this yearning is part-and-parcel of purging and moving on. It’s not a break-up record, mind - instead capturing a period of “parallel chaos” for the band members while on tour in 2022 - though it comes close to feeling exactly like one.

Its energetic, spiralling rock captures the feverish freedom of romanticised chaos under a similar context; the rollicking indie pop of ‘I Want You (Fever)’ and the rockier ‘Stay All Summer’ divulge the complexities of being an unendingly devoted - and messy - ex. Later, attachment fast transforms into hopeless lovesickness and desire for new iterations of the same thing: “I’ll see you in another life / I’m always close by / It’s such a short drive,” they sing across naughties rom-com heart-tugger ‘New Friend’. And as in all grievous ruminations comes a period of anger, as seen on the hot-headed, head-spinning ‘Last Kiss’, or ‘Bottle Blonde’, which succumbs to the hair-dye breakdown as an essential tool for healing and rediscovery. Despite all its reflections on emotional tumult, ‘Welcome to My Blue Sky’’s nostalgia encapsulates a healthy closing of a chapter. “It’s so hard to leave it,” they sing over undulating rock, closing the hazy and forlorn but peaceful record, one that reaffirms their stake in the genre: “I miss it but I’ve moved on.