Mother Mother - O My Heart

O My Heart is the sophomore album from Canadian twee darlings, Mother Mother, offering some vibrant compositions that play with all the classical complexity that a three minute pop song can hold. Unfortunately, such melodic vivacity is tragically sparse on this record. Brief glimpses of ingenuity in tracks such as Body, if anything, work to pain the listener, as their potential for experimental dynamism is never fully realised. Such delicate moments are whitewashed by the remainder of the album, largely consisting of muted instruments that work to foreground the vocals, exposing the pervasively undermining nature of its woeful lyrics; built around lists of monosyllabic words that rhyme ('ma-ma-ma-maid, got her buns in the oven and never got laid') and pedestrian metaphors milked for all they're worth (stringently limited to one per song). O My Heart is ultimately a disappointing, inadequate ode to superior micro anthems and the New Pornographers at that. [Rachel Bowles]