Mother Mother used to scorn
Were it not for Nickelback, Mother Mother might be the most hated band in Canada.
The Vancouver pop-rockers deliver quirky, often herky-jerky tunes powered by the sweet, almost chipmunkish vocals of Ryan Guldemond, his sister Molly and Jasmin Parker.
Not a day goes by when I don’t see some derogatory tweets or online posts about the fivesome — more so than any other non-Nickelback bands. “Mother Mother sucks donkey s***,” one Edmonton musician recently wrote on Facebook, kicking off a short but heated debate about the band’s merits.
After seven years and four albums, Guldemond is used to such displays of vitriol. He likes to challenge listeners with Mother Mother’s hillbilly art-pop, whether he’s showing disdain for disdain on 2011’s half-spoken hit, The Stand, or getting his dad to recite a Dutch poem on The Cry Forum, a growly number from the band’s 2012 album, The Sticks.
“There are bands like the Arcade Fire, who are eternally beloved and that looks fun, but it’s also nice to stir the pot a little bit,” he says.
Mother Mother, in Edmonton for two shows this week, even tested some of their supporters with the video to Let’s Fall In Love, the sarcastic first single (and accidental homage to Cole Porter) from The Sticks. The clip, directed by Kathi Prosser, starts with a young man and his wife in a kitchen. “Hit me,” he demands, echoing one of the most famous scenes in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 film, Raging Bull. The couple end up in a boxing ring until they’re both bloodied by the end of the video.
Uncomfortable is an understatement.
“Initially, I imagined the couple
being a bit more frumpy, to depict an anemic relationship,” says Guldemond. “Those initial visions didn’t feel so controversial. When teamed with the director’s interpretation, it became a bit more edgy. She wanted to pay homage to Raging Bull and the kitchen scene where (Robert) De Niro is prompting (Joe) Pesci to hit him, so the video took on this risque tone. I think it’s good, it’s just a metaphor for the emotional violence of love.
“Most of the time, the people who react to art have more thought-out definitions than the artists themselves. They often think, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize I made that.’ Artists follow whims and muses; it’s all immediate and spontaneous and abstract. The people who react get methodical. They slap stamps on it.”
Mother Mother’s latest batch of videos, however, are not quite as dodgy. For the title track to The Sticks, Calgary singer-songwriter and animator Chad VanGaalen crafted a creepy tale of exercise-- obsessed creatures. For Dread In My Heart and Love It Dissipates, the band asked fans to send in footage of themselves smiling, crying, cavorting or simply staring at the cameras in their phones or laptops. The former ends with a whitehaired, John Goodman-esque man who looks as if he’s going to bawl, then starts to laugh instead. “He’s priceless,” says Guldemond.
“We wanted to have a large visual component to this record, but we only have the budget to make MuchMusic-esque videos for a couple of songs, so we decided to put out a casting call to fans. You can do something really intriguing with just your iPhone ... It’s kinda neat, too, ’cuz fans get this little platform of limelight and you get to know them.”