Momma

“...‘Welcome To My Blue Sky’ feels like a snapshot of life on the road with its inherent grit and isolation, but also its panoramic, expansive quality.”

- PAPER Magazine

Momma today shared their new single “Bottle Blonde,” the latest preview of their highly anticipated forthcoming album, Welcome to My Blue Sky, due out April 4th via Polyvinyl Record Co. in North America, and Lucky Number in the UK. Directed by the band, and following a PAPER Magazine premiere/feature, the video collages together behind-the-scenes tour footage. Moody breakbeats and lush arrangements decorate the song, an intimate love letter celebrating the deep friendship between Momma’s lead vocalists, guitarists, and songwriters Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten. “We wrote this song as a letter to our past selves, when we were 23 and 24, stumbling through an extremely grueling tour that ended up taking a huge toll on our hearts and minds,” explain Friedman (they/them) and Weingarten (she/her). “We both had bleached hair and were in the midst of making huge decisions that would change our lives and also our perceptions of ourselves. The song started out as kind of an affirmation to our younger selves, that everything would be ok if you just follow your heart, but now looking back on it the lyrics could also be read as us talking to each other.”

“Bottle Blonde” follows the punchy “Ohio All The Time” and the euphoric lead single “I Want You (Fever),” which this week debuted at #39 in both the Alternative and AAA radio charts (a career first for the band) and earned fantastic press from The New York Times (Playlist), Pitchfork (Selects), Rolling Stone (Songs You Need to Know), The FADER (Songs You Need In Your Life), Paste (Best New Songs), Consequence (Top Songs), Stereogum (#1 Best Song of the Week), SPIN, The AV Club, Alternative Press, and many more. Brooklyn-based Momma will embark on their biggest headlining tour to date this spring, including a hometown show at Warsaw on May 31st, as well as Los Angeles’ The Fonda Theatre on May 9th. The band is also confirmed to perform at Primavera Sound (Barcelona and Porto) and Outbreak Festival (London and Manchester) in June. Tickets are on-sale HERE and a full itinerary is listed below. Welcome to My Blue Sky is available for pre-order HERE.

Mainly recorded live with the full band at Studio G in Brooklyn, and produced by the band’s own Aron Kobayashi Ritch (he/him), Welcome to My Blue Sky marks the follow-up to Household Name—a critically acclaimed 2022 release that manifested their ascent. With the help of drummer Preston Fulks (they/them), Momma arrived at the album’s 12 immaculately composed yet immediately potent songs by matching the raw urgency of rock with the sticky melodies and taut arrangements of pop—a dynamic born from their deepened commitment to finding the most direct vessel for their emotional expression. “With this album we were less concerned with sounding cool and heavy and rock & roll and much more focused on good, clean songwriting that hopefully inspires people to sing along and mean every word,” Weingarten reveals. 

Welcome to My Blue Sky takes place during a charmed and turbulent summer—a transformative moment in time that co-founders Friedman and Weingarten sum up as a period of “parallel chaos.” As they dealt with the fallout of that phase of their lives (a moment marked by infidelity, loneliness, heavy drinking, and the start of new romance), the two friends made a pact to wade through the mess together. “In a way it felt like we flipped our entire lives upside-down,” says Friedman. “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.”

The resultant album is their most autobiographical and exactingly realized work to date, as it documents all the life-altering upheaval the two singer/songwriter/guitarists experienced during a whirlwind mid-2022 tour. Friedman and Weingarten wrote most of the album together on acoustic guitars before sharing those songs with Kobayashi Ritch. The multi-instrumentalist/engineer then guided the band through a highly methodical demoing process aimed at elevating their sound (or, as the band puts it, “setting a new standard for ourselves”) while harnessing the infectious energy they’ve shown in touring with seminal bands like Death Cab For Cutie and Weezer, and performing at major festivals like Coachella.  

Equal parts shared memoir, communal outpouring, and riveting emotional travelogue, each track of Welcome to My Blue Sky is infused with both unsparing self-awareness and immense sensitivity. The result is a bold leap forward for one of the most creatively uncompromising and singular voices in music today.