REVIEW: Momma—Welcome To My Blue Sky (2025)

To the toppermost of the poppermost for album no.4 from the LA quartet.

Sometimes I just want a band that does indie rock, and does it properly, no messing around. Momma are that band for me right now. Track 2, I Want You (Fever) is a case in point. Big hooks, breathy vocals, big guitars, laser targeted at young people who want something they can jump around to in large crowds in the summer.

Now, it’s several decades since my young person’s rail card expired, but I’m not so addled by time that I don’t remember what it was like to be pinballed around a sea of bodies while music like this was still considered new. This is very definitely, to these ears, the sound of the (mid) 90s brought roaring back to life.

Now onto their 4th album in seven years, they’ve been great at this stuff for some time, but having recently seen their records in UK record store racks for the first time ever, it feels like someone finally got the memo this side of the pond.

Being from LA, previously you had to hope the very very best indies could recognise what a great label Polyvinyl was, but now they’re signed to Lucky Number (home of Alex G, Dream Wife, Walt Disco, and many others) this seems to have finally given them the wonderful world of distribution! Not before time: previously I literally had to import their records, so unavailable were they.

So for many folk, this may well be the first you’ve heard of them. The usual touch points appear to be Soccer Momma, I mean Mom, which is an easy comparison to make, but I reckon Momma have a tad more energy and edge to them, which is what has always drawn me to them. The Breeders have also been mentioned a few times as a comparison, but I’m not buying that. They have female vocals and are a guitar band, but they’re far more power-pop than what the Deal twins do. Far more direct. The Breeders would never do a song like Last Kiss, with its unabashed almost Smashing Pumpkins directness.

My only issue with this record is the general lack of dynamics in the production. It has that brickwalled, fatiguing sound to it, where everything is designed to push the levels of everything. The guitars, the drums, everything is in the red to the extent that hearing the whole record in one sitting is literally tiring on the ears.

It’s the trick that Oasis used to great success in the mid-90s, where their songs would come on and be much louder than anyone else’s, therefore commanding more attention. But then everyone did it, and so ever since, there’s been a loudness war that has essentially destroyed musical dynamics in the way that we knew them.

Most indie & alternative bands don’t do this anymore, thank god, so this is a strange diversion back to that kind of sound. I can only surmise it’s a very deliberate stylistic choice by the band, seeing as it’s self-produced, and their influences are loud and clear. Dare I say, I like them despite the production.

Maybe next time they will switch it up entirely, and go for something rawer, and truer to a live sound. It would suit them to a tee. In the meantime I will enjoy this for what it is: a big, loud powerpop indie record to play with the windows wide open.