Backstage with Momma

Ever since releasing their third album, Household Name, in 2022, Momma have been on their way to becoming exactly that. They made their late-night TV debut on Kimmel, covered an Elliott Smith song for Amazon Music, and, most significantly, dropped the long-awaited follow-up, Welcome to My Blue Sky, earlier this year. Whereas their last record poked fun at rock star tropes, their latest gets a lot more serious, documenting a life-altering summer of love, infidelity, and time on the road. “In a way, it felt like we flipped our entire lives upside down,” Etta Friedman admitted. “We needed to lean on each other to cope with everything we were going through, and writing songs together was a big part of working through those feelings and finally putting them to rest.” Facing up to those memories paid off, giving way to dreamier, fuzz-drenched anthems that turn the turmoil into something undeniably catchy. As they said in another interview: “We don’t have to sound like the ’90s grunge band everyone thinks we are.”

Emilio Herce

That doesn’t mean Momma have ditched the era’s influences entirely, though, telling the story of that summer with the same cool as heroes from alternative rock’s golden age. “Bottle Blonde,” an ode to bleached hair and past selves, evokes the moody pull of trip-hop, except defiantly poppier. “Last Kiss,” all raging distortion and angst, sounds indebted to nü metal. Yet there are also cuts swayed by country and folk, like the title track and “My Old Street.” When Momma stopped by Brooklyn’s Warsaw last month, they pulled out those songs alongside old favorites (“Speeding 72,” “Biohazard,” “Bang Bang”) and a Narrow Head cover (“Sunday”). Photographer Emilio Herce was on site, capturing the band behind the scenes and during the show.