Take the Lovers Home Tonight Reviews
As alter-egos go, Mother, the cartoonish creation of musician Sam Smith, is a towering and schizophrenic one. Caught between the liquid tonsils of Bryan Ferry and the shrill, ragged pantomime of Nicky Tesco of punk band the Members, Mother is both suave seducer and suburban anarchist atop a shaky soap box. And the music is even stranger, with new wave just the straight-between-the-eyes starting point.
On top of synths are tossed soul and blues, the psychobilly camaraderie of Oh Yeah You Look Nice, the dangerous intent and staggering guitars of Fuck Me Mummy I Feel Ugly. Who Art You Girls? flutters it's mascara-heavy lashes at the New York Dolls, while much of the eccentric, multi-layered songs make mischief in the long shadow of the Super Furry Animals.
Perhaps it would be enough to have put these contradictory influences in a blender and served it up as a confident debut. But the moments where the band became themselves - the unexpected, surreal, humour and twinkle-toed waltzes through burgeoning melancholy - make this a great album.
4/5 |
Betty Clarke | The Guardian
The debut album by Mother And The Addicts, entitled Take The Lovers Home Tonight, is released on Monday 22nd August. And in the 40 minutes it will take you to listen to the CD, they may just become your new favourite British band...
Mother And The Addicts ply, superficially at least, the same trade as fellow Scot art-rocksters Franz Ferdinand. But where Franz have already knackered themselves by sticking rigidly to their grown up arched eyebrow white funk, Mother And The Addicts spend their time here being almost compulsively eclectic.
There's Father In Heaven, an instrumental which could pass as one of The Libertines' old sad waltzes, but one that benefits from not having a rubbish lanky junkie slurring borrowed poetry all over the top of it. There's Even Time Will Destroy Me, which we'd call ambient if we thought it'd do it justice. Or there's Fuck Me Mummy I Feel Ugly - available from the band's website as a free download - a deranged, thousand-mile-an-hour blast of spiky pop heaven.
They can be irresistibly funky (the title track), they can be heartbreakingly sad (the micro-lengthed Ron Dawn From Var) or they can be exactly what we wish the soundtrack to Grease was like (everything else). Because the album changes tone so many times in 40 short minutes, it takes a while to find the record's heart. But it's there - and when it hooks you, it hooks hard.
The album is held together by Mother's voice, which alternates between The Make Up's exasperated screaming and Bryan Ferry-style crooning. In fact, the closest reference point here is Roxy Music - good, Virginia Plain Roxy Music, not bad, Dance Away Roxy Music.
Mother And The Addicts have put a great big bloody smile on our faces. One to watch, definitely.
Stuart Heritage | www.hecklerspray.com
The irony of the current revival of post-punk - music from that turbulent era at the turn of the '70s, when bands on either side of the Atlantic strove to fill the tabula rasa left by punk with fresh, unique visions for rock's future - is that all of today's would-be revivalists sound exactly the same as each other. Back in the day, this twitchy-riffed plagiarism would have been laughed out of town.
Notable exceptions include Franz Ferdinand (obviously), and fellow Glaswegians Mother and the Addicts, who, above and beyond their rather disturbing name, breathe a genuine sense of havoc and unpredictability into their music.
The quintet's debut album is an absolute riot. With its chiming, off-kilter guitars, the title track suggests a weird, unhinged version of Rip It Up by Orange Juice (another Glasgow connection). In general, the outré, unruly art-punk band Swell Maps are clearly referenced. Amid the aural chaos, there's a clear pop sensibility, occasionally tinged with disco, as in Own Sensation, and the album closes with a beautiful Brian Eno-esque synth instrumental. Here, brilliantly, one really can expect the unexpected.
Andrew Perry | The Telegraph