Mother Mother is not only a Canadian indie rock band based in Vancouver, but theyâve also held me lovingly in a musical chokehold for the past three years. Something about their music just scratches the itch in my brain, and even though I love some of their albums more than others, Iâve never failed to find something I enjoy about each one. Although the bandâs freshman album, Touch Up (2007), is far from my favorite album in their discography, I still enjoy listening to it for two big reasons: the way they combine rock with the sounds of country riffs, bluegrass, and folk music, and how Touch Up serves as the precursor to the themes of isolation, conformity, and bodily dysphoria Mother Mother regularly incorporate into their music.
Because I donât have particularly strong feelings about most of the songs from Touch Up, Iâll instead be analyzing five songs that I believe best capture Mother Motherâs most commonly examined themes. Please note that my interpretations are my own, and I do not speak for the intentions of the songwriters.
âDirty Townâ is the very first song in the album, and tells the story of someone who wants to move out to the countryside and âwash [their] hands of a dirty townâ, where theyâve presumably lived for long enough that they feel the urge to leave it. Throughout the song, the bandâs vocalists, Ryan Guldemond, Molly Guldemond, and Jasmin Parkin sing entirely in a southern accent, and as the song progresses, they slowly begin to incorporate more countryisms and slang into their lyrics as the narrator integrates more into the country lifestyle, like repeating certain sounds like âa-a-a-allâ to imitate the sounds chickens make and having the chorus gradually shift from âI donât like living in a dirty townâ to âget gone from a dirty townâ.
âDirty Townâ does an excellent job setting both the tone and the overarching themes of not just the album, but the themes that continue to appear throughout Mother Motherâs discography. The song is their first attempt at exploring themes of isolation, and wanting to get away from a place that no longer has anything left for you. Other songs in their catalog examine themes of isolation to greater effect, particularly on their Inside and The Sticks albums, but nevertheless, âDirty Townâ is still an excellent song that has a unique sound, and, as a bonus, tells a cohesive narrative from start to finish.
âPolynesiaâ, the second track, is a significant departure from âDirty Townâ in terms of its tone and themes. The song talks about a group of people sailing on a ship to Polynesia, a cluster of islands located in Oceania. With slower orchestration and the vocalists stretching out the end of the lyrics, the song really does make me feel like sailing away from all my troubles and letting myself drift across the ocean. What gives the song its depth, however, is that itâs also about taking risks to find happiness and self-fulfillment. The lyrics âRemember when we said/âYou gonna see us with a sailor tanâ?/We’ll think of you and your stark white hands/Building your model ships, wishing you were sailing aroundâ imply the singers are making fun of their loved ones for choosing a life that is predictable and risk-free, for making fake models of ships instead of taking a chance on the real thing and following their passions out on the sea.
If nothing else, I do appreciate âPolynesiaâ as one of the albumâs more lighthearted tracks, and for establishing the theme of âsailing awayâ from something. While sailing away is meant to be taken very literally in âPolynesiaâ, it has also been used as a metaphor in others like âTwoâ from the album Inside, where the vocalists sing about looking inside themselves during times of turmoil, and that the only way to truly do that is to âsail awayâ from realityânot to get away from it, but to turn inward and confront the source of their turmoil.
âAngry Seaâ is a song I find deeply compelling on the album primarily because of the lyrics, rather than the musicâwhich isnât to say the song doesnât sound good. âAngry Seaâ is a smooth segue from âPolynesia,â because the title is similar to the subject matter of the latter, despite the different content.
Supposedly, the idea behindâAngry Seaâ isâall the problems in the world today in the form of a tsunami that is crashing on a perfect and pristine beachâ. However, I interpreted it to be about refusing to conform to the way everyone else is living, which is another major theme thatâs prevalent in their other songs, such as âBaby Donât Danceâ from Eureka and âNormalizeâ from Grief Chapter. The narrator refers to the concept of conformity as a parasite and a disease âthat everybody’s got these daysâ, and even goes so far as to compare it to getting a lobotomy. The lyrics themselves are almost mournful, and the slow acoustic guitar adds to the more somber tone.
Quite fittingly, âLegs Awayâ is a great song to listen to if youâre going on a walk, and I canât count the number of times Iâve timed my footsteps to the laid back instrumentation and easygoing beat of the song. However, despite its lackadaisical vibes, the content of the song is quite sad if you pay closer attention to the lyrics, which tell the story of how the narratorâs been lost all day, and that they desperately want to âwishâ their legs away since theyâre taking the narrator ânowhere safeâ.
Mother Mother has written several songs revolving around the concept of your own body rebelling against you. Some of them are much darker in tone, with prime examples being âBodyâ from O My Heart and âCalm Me Downâ from Eureka. âLegs Awayâ is decidedly much lighter in its tone and content, and its lyrics lack the themes of extreme dysphoria and body horror as its cousins. However, I donât believe a lack of graphic themes or imagery makes âLegs Awayâ an inferior song, it perfectly fits in with the rest of the songs in the albumâs tone and themes.
This is my favorite song on the album! Like âAngry Seaâ, where the lyrics tell the story of someone who chooses to live their life the way they want to. Thatâs where the similarities end, however: âTic Tocâ is not only the shortest song on the album, clocking in at just over a minute and a half in length, but itâs also incredibly fast-paced, reminiscent of a child who has a habit of speaking too fast for people to catch what theyâre saying. In this case, however, itâs very much intentional.
Moreover, the lyrics and the way theyâre sung support this theoryâas well as being sung very quickly, the lyrics are also more immature and confident utilize the repetition of phrases such as âIâm not listening to youâ, which almost makes the singers sound like children who wonât listen to their parents. This is achieved without actually making the singing sound annoying or childish. The main reason I enjoy and resonate with this song so much is that I was that kid who spoke too fast for people to catch what I was saying, albeit not on purpose. I got reprimanded for it a lot, and I guess deep down, it was nice to hear a song where people spoke fast anyway and didnât care what other people thought about it.
Although it may not have seemed like I had much good to say about Touch Up, as I stated before, Iâve never had difficulty finding something I love about every single Mother Mother album, and Touch Up is no different. I adore Touch Up for not just establishing the musical tone and themes of the band as a whole, but for also managing to stand out as a unique entry to their discography, even almost two decades later.