The Great Escape Festival was great, no doubt about that. But one of my main regrets of the mammoth three days of music was missing Mothers. Whenever I spoke to fellow music lovers at the festival, time after time it would be, “Have you heard this American band called Mothers? They were amazing!” Well yes I have, but I decided to see someone else instead. Since then, I have become slightly obsessed with their debut album, When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired, waiting for a UK tour to be announced. Elation came the day that the great people at Teen Creeps made sure Mothers had a Brighton date on their schedule.

So who are they? Mothers was the solo project of Kristine Leschper, an art student in Athens, Georgia. As we found out in our recent interview with the band, Mothers only became a full band weeks before going into the studio to record their debut, giving the album a unique, organic quality where the compositions are immediate and instinctive. When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired is undoubtedly one of the overlooked gems of 2016.

The evening started with a local band, Blush, that were new to me but were a welcome surprise. The Brighton four-piece, consisting of two girls and two boys, combined simple melodies to create a dreamy and sensitive sound. Lead singer Asya’s airy vocals were like a deep breath of Brighton’s sea breeze – cool, inviting and refreshing. She thanked a full audience for their kind reaction, admitting that they don’t usually play to a room so full, but the appreciation was totally towards them. Blush were quietly confident in their grungey surf-pop sound, and so they should be, as they will be quickly making waves in Brighton’s and the UK’s music scene.

Having played two shows over The Great Escape, the Brighton crowd knew what to expect when Mothers took to the stage – arresting vocals, lulling sounds and a real treat for the ears. The four-piece started with arguably their most well known song, ‘It Hurts Until It Doesn’t’, setting the typically sombre theme that comes with Mothers’ music. Kristine’s beautiful yet haunting vocal delivery made the sweltering Green Door Store an intimate pit of public anguish. Along with the emotionally heavy rhythms the band were producing, parts of the audience found themselves staring at the ground, lost in insular thoughts. This is one of the things that makes Mothers stand out from the rest, the ability to convey the feelings of others, making their live performance an utterly cathartic experience.

The crowd were completely captivated by their off-kilter indie rock, stricken in stillness by the powerful sentiment of the songs or slowly swaying to the intricate changes in pace in the math rock riffs. You could have been forgiven for thinking the band had been together for a lifetime, with the entire band ebbing and flowing as one. Raw oblique guitar melodies and the dancing tempo changes in the sublime drum beat added an extra depth and ingenuity to the songs that I didn’t know could exist. And as an added bonus, we were gifted to an early listen to new material with ‘Western Medicine’ particularly standing out.
Iain Lauder

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