Single Mothers have always sounded pissed off. I doubt that there was ever a time when lead singer Andrew Thomson didn't see a red door and want to paint it black or look up at a hot air balloon and wonder what it would look like as it was sucked into a jet engines turbine. This vicious energy took the form of frayed and unhinged sounding post-hardcore on their earlier EP and later transitioned into a maladjusted, but functional, melocore that flirted with grunge in a similar manner to Title Fight and Citizen (during roughly the same period, as well). Throughout those years, Andrew grew as a vocalist and songwriter while retaining a youthful fire about him- coming off like Jeremy Bolm's younger, angrier, and federal penitentiary-bound brother.
Sounds fun right? I agree. When it comes to punk, few things can set the mood better than shouting out your resentments over a few, well-timed power-chords. And Single Mothers became experts at just that. Since 2008 (with a brief hiatus where Andrew took the mountains to prospect for gold [I am not kidding]), the band has been incredibly consistent and accomplished in venting their spleen through some thoroughly indelible and damaged sounding tunes. ... and not you can basically shred every facetof the description I have offered for the band. Wanna know why? Because Bubble is here. And it means trouble for anyone who gets ruffled by change. If you're the type of person who got mad over Black Flag's transition to My War, you might want to check out right now. For everyone else, you are welcome to proceed.
Bubble was released in 2021 following a month-long "song a day" (sorta, not really) challenge Andrew committed himself to, and his adventure in artistic growth has taken him to a very different place. Promoted by the band under the name SM Worldwide, Bubble is, well, a hip-hop album. It's still very punk, for sure, but only in the way that you can still consider someone like Juiceboxxx punk- they have the attitude, but the vibe is completely turned around. Single Mothers have elected rhymes over riffs, and delivered them with a fresh serving of beats, hold the d-.
This new incarnation of the band sounds like it came together after a hypothetical, and highly unlikely, turn of events. I don't know what those events were per se, but it had to be something more profound than a song-a-day dare. Bubble sounds like Patrick Kindlon taking over for M. Doughty on Soul Coughings on a cross-country tour. And yes, I am imagining that something of the magnitude of this improbable series of events germinated a record. Don't scoff. I know you'd get tickets for that tour if it came through your town. I know I would!
The beats that back Andrew's jerky, acidic, and stream-of-conscious vocals, on Bubble are equally radical post-punk skronk and vindictively vaudevillian. It's pretty freaky but it grows on you fast. "Brick Wall" sounds like a sloppy blood transfusion between The Jam and The Clash, with dubby guitars and mutant vocal passages bleeding through the speakers of an old vacuum tube radio.
Once you get past the shock of what is going on here, you'll discover that a lot of these tracks flat-out slap! Like the groovy, chewy and slightly sour crackle of "Honey Bee." Others like "Washing Up" are terse and understated, simmering at a surprisingly high temperature while appearing calm on the surface. Beck has committed murder (that I know of) but a track like "Delete Voicemail" is what I'd expect to be thumping in his lobes as plotted it- hiding behind a pair of oversized sunglasses, cruising in a convertible down Mulholland Drive, while he incubates some unspecified scheme for revenge.
The still present punk side of the band rises to the surface like blood pooling under the skin of a bruise on "Crescendo" where Andrew shouts like no-one is listening, "Do you want to be a brick or a window? / Do you want to fade out or crescendo? / How do you like glass all over the floor?" I think we know which path the band has taken.
Like much of Bubble, "Crescendo" is bitter and sardonic, resentful sounding and born of frustration, impatient and irresponsibly ready to scrape something off its chest and throw it at you- in other words, they sound pretty hardcore. Despite everything, Bubble is perhaps most incredible because it still thoroughly sounds like a Single Mothers record. Even after retooling the machine, it still runs best on the same brand of unleaded anger. Bubble may not be the record you expected, needed, or wanted from the Single Mothers, but it is the record they were ready to give you, which means that it is the one you deserved, and the one you're going to have to learn to live.
