Mother Tongues announce Everything You Wanted EP (Buzz Records)/Share “Let You Down”
Mother Tongues Announce Everything You Wanted EPShare “Let You Down“EP Out July 31st On Buzz Records
Toronto’s Mother Tongues have been an increasingly visible presence in the city’s music scene in recent times, though with members logging time with Polaris Prize winner Lido Pimienta, and projects like Luna Li, Maylee Todd, Mimico and Hooded Fang, the band’s component parts were already familiar faces in Canadian music.
Trafficking in a cerebral brand of dreamy psych that shares some common ground with contemporaries like Homeshake and Mild High Club, the band have established a growing reputation in Toronto on the back of performances with artists like Yves Jarvis, Doc Dunn and Doldrums, and today the band are announcing their debut EP on Buzz Records, a release called Everything You Wanted, with its first single “Let You Down.”
WATCH: Mother Tongues’ “Let You Down” video
On their latest single Let you down, Mother Tongues explore themes of mysticism, free will, and romance. A drum kit echoes down a distant hallway, a tiger claw swipes the keys of a combo organ launching you into the up tempo bounce of the catchy psyche pop number. The contrast of Charise Aragoza’s crystalline vocals and the driving bed of phased guitars and nuanced percussion may remind listeners of Stereolab, Melody’s Echo Chamber, and Broadcast. The 60s inspired bopper ventures seamlessly into noise rock territory, eventually flowering into a lush shoegazey soundscape for a satisfying finale.
Mother Tongues harks back to a time when music and mysticism were entwined, carrying on the canon of psychedelic music that came before them, taking things somewhere new and unexplored. A link to the past, a glimpse into the future. The group has been a prominent part of the Toronto music scene for the last 5 years. Members Lukas Cheung, Charise Aragoza ( Maylee Todd ), Konrad Karczewski, Nick Kervin (Mimico) , Hannah Bussiere Kim (Luna Li) were brought together through a mutual love of everything from 60s french pop, to break beats, kraut rock, shoegaze and film scores. With an equal embrace of pop sensibilities and the experimental, the group has come into ah an inventive new sound reflective of their eclectic palette. They have toured the U.S and Canada, sharing the stage with notable artists such as Dilly Dally, Fucked Up, U.S Girls, The Mattson Two, The Sadies, Doldrums, Moonking, and Yves Jarvis.
They have played festivals and showcases that include Night Owl Fest, River & Sky, Transmit Fest, NXNE, CMW, Bloor West Fest, SWIFF, Exclaim’s Class Of series, Long Winter, Crystal Lake, and Hollowfest. The group’s performances are an explosive experience that pulls the audience in with metronomic kraut rhythms, they weave in and out of different genres and spaces seamlessly. Serene moments of lush shoegaze drones contrasted with punishing breakdowns. Comparisons have been made to Stereolab, Broadcast, CAN, and The Flaming Lips.
“Everything You Wanted” is the debut release from Toronto based Mother Tongues. On the sound of Mother Tongues, Cheung the founding member of the group states, “We’re always striving to create an atmosphere, It should feel like a space, real, or imagined. Music has always had that power over me, to take me somewhere glamorous and grand or stark and uncomfortable; it transports you. It can grant you access to all these impossible spaces, it’s like you can strum two chords and all of a sudden you’re in a new room, a different era.”At the same time the songs off “Everything You Wanted” are a reflection of a very real community. A blossoming psychedelic music scene in Toronto. The set of songs have grown and gone through countless revisions through 5 years of live shows.
They’ve been informed by audiences, and other bands. “It’s really full circle that these songs I wrote in an apartment as a form of escapism have cultivated such a rich community, it’s made us friends around the world and given us the opportunity to tour and travel.”The group covers a lot of ground, from the single “Let You Down” that starts as a fast paced pop song soaked in nostalgia then weaves into counterpoint guitar parts reminiscent of Phillip Glass and ends in a cacophony of swirling, phasing guitars .
The title track where walls of shoe-gazey guitars lay the bedwork under musings of “too much excitement for me”. Grooves and a thumping baseline that brings to mind influences like Stereolab, sit seamlessly next to Sabbath worthy fuzz lines in the song “Fortunes”. Metronomic Kraut rhythms disintegrate into doom metal breakdowns in the 7 minute epic “Eternity”. “We’re music lovers and that’s who we made this record for, it’s our compass and the catalyst for everyone and everything near and dear to us. More than anything I hope the record expresses a sense of wonder to the listener. I think we downplay that aspect, you’re rippin’ it through a fuzz pedal, vibrating frequencies in the air and affecting people’s emotions, changing their brain chemistry. That’s magic.”
Everything You Wanted is Out July 31st on Buzz Records. It is available for purchase here.
