Mothers
Render Another Ugly Method
Release Date: Sep 7, 2018
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Epitaph
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Album Review: Render Another Ugly Method by Mothers
Very Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
'Render Another Ugly Method', finds Mothers sticking to the blueprints set on 2016 debut 'When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired'. Here Kristine Leschper is capable of sliding melodies into a rush of oblique guitars, like a doleful game of Tetris - this game typically melts into slow, brooding breakdowns, or sharp rushes of glitchy feedback, as displayed audibly on 'PINK'. Mothers step into ambient territory on 'MOTHER AND WIFE', and Kristine exhibits her imperfect yet titanic vocal range.
Based on rating 4
“I am excited at the prospect of living without a body / I am ungrateful and this proves it” – WEALTH CENTER RISK CAPITAL It was evident from first hearing that Mothers' debut album might well end up being one of the coming year's best. Released early in 2016, into a world still reeling from the loss of one irreplaceable figure, with precious little idea of the tragedies yet to come – both within the cultural sphere and without – When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired was an album of fractured beauty. Based around poems, fragments and sketches by vocalist, guitarist and visual artist Kristine Leschper, the songs appeared transformed by the often intricate, multi-part structures she and her band crafted for them.
Based on rating 7/10
Not in that way, anyway. Render Another Ugly Method won't deliver any of these things. And while that may sound a little dramatic, as the album unfurls, it's at times hard to believe that this is the same band that gave us the wistful, vulnerable, at times delicate and cathartic, both heart-breaking and heart-mending debut When You Walk A Long Distance You Are Tired a few years ago.
Based on rating 7/10
The second album from Kristine Leschper's idiosyncratic indie rock project Mothers, Render Another Ugly Method already represents a marked stylistic expansion just two years after the band's debut. With production by Grammy winner John Congleton, whose well-established résumé includes such elite alt artists as St. Vincent, Alvvays, and Angel Olsen, it ventures away from a haunting, forlorn folk-rock into a more ambitious exploration of structure, rhythm, and emotional malaise.
Based on rating C
The Lowdown: Mothers' debut full length, When You Walk a Long Distance You Are Tired, was a record with a tender touch. In the past two years following the album's critical success, they've moved from Athens, GA, to Philadelphia, perhaps trading in Southern sweetness and charm for something more urgent and fast-paced, as well as signed to a larger record label, ANTI. If When You Walk… was easy listening, Render Another Ugly Method is anything but.
'Render Another Ugly Method'
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