Momma Are Officially Rock Stars

Momma weren’t asking for much three years ago. They just wanted to be famous, is all.

“I wanna be your next big thing,” Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten intoned on “Rip Off,” the opening track to 2022’s Household Name. They bookended it with “No Stage,” where they declared, “I can fill an auditorium.” In between, of course, was “Rockstar,” where the duo laid their intentions bare over grungy guitars and a nod to the Smashing Pumpkins.

Their manifestations worked. The Brooklyn-based band went on their first headlining tour that summer, then followed it in 2023 on a run opening for alt rock giants Weezer and Modest Mouse. Momma was, at least in indie rock circles, a Household Name.

“It was just a whirlwind,” Weingarten reflects over Zoom. “We wrote [Household Name] before anything really happened. We wrote it during COVID. So we didn't even know if we were going to be able to tour it … It was just very much storytelling.”

“It is hilarious to look at that record and be like, rock & roll, oh yeah!,” Friedman adds. “It all seemed awesome. And it is awesome. It's amazing. I wouldn't trade this job for the world. It's exactly what we want to be doing.”

But the singer-guitarists also learned firsthand that being on the road is disorienting. “Nothing prepares you for how taxing tour can be and the rollercoaster of emotions that will happen,” Weingarten says. She and Friedman have both been forthcoming about how they fell in love with new people – whilst in long-term relationships – while away from home.

They sing about all of it on Household Name follow-up Welcome to My Blue Sky, released April 4 via Polyvinyl. “I’m fucking up my life,” they admit in lead single “Ohio All the Time,” while “I Want You (Fever)” – destined to be the earworm song of the summer that Household Name’s “Speeding 72” was – soundtracks that lust with glitchy synths, “ow-ow-ow” vocalizations, and a “Pick up and leave her/ I want you, fever” refrain.

“It felt natural to talk about that [experience],” Weingarten says. Later, she admits the duo did ask themselves, “‘Is it too far to talk about infidelity and cheating? Is that not something we should be really saying?’ But at the end of the day, I think no songwriter should censor themselves ever.”

Momma, which also features bassist/producer Aron Kobayashi Ritch and drummer Preston Fulks, remains a guitar-forward band – with Deftones-esque crunch, Welcome to My Blue Sky centerpiece “Last Kiss” is probably their heaviest song yet – but the record also progresses the quartet’s sound.

“We could have just rewritten Household Name. It would have been easy,” Friedman says. “But the content of what we're talking about is so different and so intimate and so emotional, a lot more personal, that I think each song has its own little mood because it's attached to a story and an experience.

“I think it was doing us a disservice, and also maybe what we were talking about a disservice, if we were just going to make it all really loud, heavy guitars,” they continue. “There's definitely some songs on Welcome to My Blue Sky that have that, and that, to me, feels intentional, because it's emotional or angry or whatever it may be. Passionate. Those are all emotions that could maybe be tied into that. But then we have softer things, or things that we just wanted to experiment with.”

Friedman cites new single “Bottle Blonde” as an encapsulation of both Momma’s sonic evolution and their songwriting process. Electronic textures color the track, another reflection on that fraught-but-fun summer – before the artists dyed their hair darker.

“Bottle blonde, you’re a god/ You’re gonna figure it out,” Friedman and Weingarten sing. In a way, it seems, the duo’s enduring friendship has replaced success as Momma’s new mantra.

“Our friendship is really at the center of [the band],” Friedman confirms. “I don't know why, but Allegra and I, just since we met and started writing songs, it just felt easy… We just have a really amazing symbiotic relationship. We know how to communicate with each other really well.”

“There's a spark there, you know?,” Weingarten adds. Along with producer Kobayashi Ritch, who helps the two realize their ideas, she confirms an insular quality to Momma’s process.

“When Etta and I grow as songwriters, Aron grows as a producer, and we all push each other to just be better and to try new things,” she says. “If anyone else were to step inside of that world, it would just feel really random and weird. So we definitely want to keep it like this forever.”

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Momma plays the Mohawk on Sunday, May 4 with Brennan Wedl and On Being an Angel.