Mother And The Addicts is actually fronted by a dude named Mother, which isn’t too odd when taking the music of this Glasgow-based rock band into consideration. The quartet dishes out a shifting checkerboard of experimental, jam, prog, funk, and krautrock that never seems to stay in one place. The band’s sophomore album, Science Fiction Illustrated, careens all over the place, but is held together by complex musicianship and some flash guitar work. Mother’s voice straddles David Byrne and David Bowie with a robust flavor to go along with the halt-and-fire delivery. There’s some dizzying guitar work on Science Fiction Illustrated, like the fleet-fingered fret break dances on “Are Others” and the folksy Kinks-esque guitars on “All In the Mind.” The hot griddle strings on “Roll Me On Over” manage to fuse jangle pop with Commander Cody as Mother shuffles the cards with a Dave Davies vocal performance. Throughout the entire album, there’s an undeniable injection of the nerdy white funk of The Talking Heads that can twist the sound from a western roll (“The Wild”) to a hipster disco (“Watch The Lines”).
Though few melodies are very memorable, Mother And The Addicts is an instrumental genre-bending force to be reckoned with. Even if you can’t dance, Science Fiction Illustrated doesn’t mind, and is poised to provide all the tunes you’ll need for a night of unhinged jigs.
--Matt Wendus
