Album Review: Welcome To My Blue Sky by Momma

Halfway through Momma's fourth album, Welcome to My Blue Sky, "How to Breathe" shifts from brooding introspection to towering catharsis. It's a moment that encapsulates everything that makes this record a triumphant leap forward for the Brooklyn quartet. After the success of 2022's Household Name, Momma could have played it safe, churning out more of the same '90s-indebted indie rock.

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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.

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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.

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