Mommy "Songs About Children" LP
Side A: The Day I Turned Thirteen, NY Presbyterian, NO More Fathers, Learning In The Bathroom, In My Dollhaus (Please Never Leave Me)
Side B: My Two Dead Dogs, How To Act At Funerals, A Jealous Boy/Mommy
"Debut 12" from this NYC punk band, and along with the recent 7" from Haram, it's proving that there's still plenty of vital punk happening in NYC. Mommy are definitely more on the avant-garde end of the Toxic State sound, their bass-drums-vocals setup being somewhat of a departure from the norm. I've heard that live they split the signal coming from the bass across two amps for a beefier sound, but it seems like several (but not all) of the songs here are augmented with additional noise overdubs. In addition to the sound, the lyrics here are also phenomenal. They're all about / from the perspective of childhood, kind of focusing on the intersection of the child and adult worlds, and generally implying that kids notice and absorb a lot more (typically bad stuff) than most people assume... "The Day I Turned Thirteen," "Learning in the Bathroom," and "How to Act at Funerals" are particularly arresting in how they approach this subject. It's interesting because I always thought that Crazy Spirit had a motif of childhood running through their lyrics and imagery, but Mommy's is so much more sinister and disturbing... I mean, I run a record store that deals in extreme music so I'm inundated with quote unquote "shocking" imagery all of the time, but Mommy's lyrics are genuinely discomforting. More importantly than that, though, they're really thought-provoking. They make me see the world around me in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise, and at the end of the day I think that's precisely what poetry is supposed to do. Anyway, as you can probably tell I think quite a lot of this LP... it's not a good-time, put it on when you're about to head out to the club on Saturday night music, but it has something really important to say, which is something that is true of very, very few punk records these days. Highly recommended." - Sorry State (summed it up real well)
