Announcing their new album, Brooklyn’s alt rock crusaders talk friendship, life lessons and how they’re sticking two fingers up to those who’ve doubted them.
Turbulence, chaos, instability… all words that you wouldn’t usually align with new music. Yet, for Brooklyn based alt rock band, Momma, they’ve turned the negative connotations into something much more positive. They’re led by songwriters, guitarists and co-founders, Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, alongside drummer Preston Fulks and bassist turned band producer, mixer and engineer, Aron Kobayashi Ritch. Live performance is etched in Momma’s DNA, having toured with everyone from Death Cab for Cutie to beabadoobee. Fittingly, their new fourth album Welcome To My Blue Sky was born out of a live tour back in the summer of 2022. However, it wasn’t all plain sailing.
Infidelity, loneliness and heavy drinking weighed down upon Friedman and Weingarten during this period. They’d been friends since they were 16 years old, meeting in high school and growing up together through their music. Turbulence, as aforementioned, ensued. But ultimately, it was their inseparable bond that allowed them to wade through the mess together, culminating in Welcome To My Blue Sky.
The band’s forthcoming album has been announced today, alongside their palpable new single “I Want You (Fever)”. The track sees Momma embracing new pop-leaning approaches, whilst still staying true to their trademark, ferocious guitar energy. It also sets the tone for their latest body of work, which flows with an air of honesty and maturity, marking a real step up for the band and laying a path ahead for them which now looks more promising than ever.
Wonderland talked to Momma about friendship, life lessons and how they’re sticking two fingers up to those who’ve doubted them…
Listen to the new single…
Read the interview…
Congratulations on the announcement of your upcoming fourth album. In a nutshell, what can people expect?
Allegra: I’d like to say that people should expect to be unexpected! But you can hear the Momma ‘voice’ throughout the entire record. It’s definitely a lot more personal than anything we’ve ever written; it’s a lot more autobiographical. So, I guess you can expect to learn more about us as people.
In terms of your music, how do you balance staying true to your roots whilst evolving as a band?
Etta: If you look at our discography, through our writing process for each album, I think that we discover that we’re maturing through our music. We have a strong identity of who we are and what we do, and for Allegra and I, essences of what we first wrote when we were 16 still carry through today.
Allegra: The one constant throughout everything has been Etta and I’s songwriting together. We have this ability to speak a language with each other, and that’s something that will never change.
You’ve been friends since high school. How has your friendship also evolved over the years, especially with the pressures that come with making and releasing multiple albums?
Allegra: Our friendship has evolved a lot. We’ve been in each other’s live since we were 16 years old and now, we’re like family. We rely on each other for so much outside of just music; when we first became friends, it was through writing songs together. Now, we’re so integrated into each other’s lives in every regard. We’ve learned to be each other’s rocks.
Etta: If we have nothing, at least we have each other, and we’ll always have that no matter what.
The new album was written around your summer tour back in 2022. What was it that made you decide that this period of time would inform Welcome To My Blue Sky?
Etta: It was actually one of our first headline tours and it was really emotional and rough at times. There were a lot of experiences we both individually had from it that we needed to purge into new music. But doing that was what helped bring us together – there was no other choice but to write about that time.
What kind of things did you experience?
Allegra: The main experience that Etta was talking about was a romantic experience that we were both having at the same time, involving two different relationships. I remember there was a point during the writing sessions for this album where we looked at each other and thought, “we shouldn’t write about this again, right?” We didn’t want this record to just be about that… but then we’d sit on it and realise we both had a lot more to say. It wasn’t a conscious decision that this album was going to be a time capsule, it just kept on coming out of us.
What were some of the main lessons you both learned during this time?
Allegra: Etta and I have a phrase which is, “sometimes, you just have to make a hurricane.” This has been a little bit of a mantra for us, in that if you completely fuck up your life by making mistakes, things will ultimately be okay.
Etta: Things came to a breaking point where we weren’t happy, and we realised we needed a switch of some sort. Being able to commit to that is hard, but once you get over the harder stuff, you can look back and realise that it’s an awesome move to address how we’re feeling. Ultimately, you can make mistakes, and it’s going to be okay.
Where your previous album Household Name revolved a lot around rock culture, your latest single “I Want You (Fever)” blends alternative and pop elements together. Did this influence the direction you wanted to take the new album in?
Allegra: Yeah, definitely. I feel like the song does combine our identity as being this rock act (people like to call us grunge which I have feelings about!), with more of a poppier sound. It was so easy to write. We loved how it sounded and wanted to keep things going in that direction, but more so, we wanted to chase the feeling that we had while writing it. It’s been ages since we first wrote that song and I’m still in love with it.
Etta: I think I’m the proudest of this out of everything we’ve made. We’ve sat down with all of these songs for a while, but we can both still listen back to it and feel just as happy as we did when we first wrote them.
“Ohio All The Time” captures the album’s summery, coming-of-age feel. How did this one come about?
Allegra: We were at Etta’s house and were working on another song at the time. I remember Etta went to pour a drink and then the second she came in, I was like, “what about these chords?” It’s three chords the entire time, it’s so simple. Then I played around with the vocal melody, which I didn’t like at first, but Etta insisted that it was really cool. And then the thing happened where we were like, “we shouldn’t write about the summer of ’22, right?” – but we totally wrote about it!
Have your experiences of being openly vulnerable on this record perhaps set a tone for your future as a band?
Etta: I think so. It was scary for us to write, and to play it in front of our parents. We were all sobbing; it was really cathartic. I feel like it’s allowed us to start this whole new chapter as a band. We’re all very open with each other in the band, and we were open about our experiences on that summer ’22 tour. I don’t know if it’s setting a tone, but it’s just us all growing up, essentially.
Do you already have plans lined up for your next album?
Allegra: We’ll have to see when we start playing these new songs live – that’s when the wheels start turning for what will become our follow up album. If we end up feeling sick of playing one song over and over, the next thing we write will probably be the complete antithesis of that.
Interesting, so having that live experience is crucial when it comes to your songwriting?
Allegra: For sure, especially with this album. With Household Name, personally, I realised I was getting sick of playing lots of lead guitar lines all the time. Sometimes it’s not fun to be on stage and just staring down entire time! So, for this record, I focused on different things like new chord progressions, bringing in some acoustic tracks to change the dynamics, rather than everything being super loud.
You joined beabadoobee on her UK tour last year. How was that experience?
Etta: We’ve been lucky to tour with a lot of bands that we look up to. The last time we played in the UK was my absolute favourite time being there. Touring with beabadoobee was so great. We’ve known her for a long time, and we’d been wanting to do it for ages. It was fun to hang out after the shows, her and her friends knew all the pubs where shit was happening.
What are you most looking forward to for the remainder of the year?
Etta: I’m excited to fully step into the realm of not being a support band, and going out to do more headline shows.
Allegra: I’m excited to hopefully not have to go back to work. We both work day jobs on top of our music and I am so over it! I’m really looking forward to Momma being my full-time job and sticking it to all of the people who’ve doubted us along the way.
Words – Jamie Wilde