The last time Mother Mother played in Nelson, it was a free show in Lakeside Park for the 2008 Keep the Beat music festival.
In the four years since, the quirky Vancouver indie rock quintet has released a new record nearly every year and has circled North America in tour vans that grew to tour busses.
“Every year the show gets bigger,” says frontman Ryan Guldemond. “We bring more lighting, more guitar pedals, a bigger drum kit, and need a bigger tour bus and more stage crew to make it all happen.”
They started the current tour last month in Halifax and are working their way West towards their home in Vancouver, as they promote their fourth album, The Sticks, released in September.
The Sticks is something of a concept album, with brooding and moody songs that centre around the perils of the modern world.
“It’s about getting back to a simpler existence and trying to free oneself from the binds of the varmint, fabricated things that humans have imposed upon themselves in order to function and communicate,” Guldemond says.
He says he stumbled upon the theme in one song and soon that sentiment had made its way into every song on the album.
“I really relate to it; I’m a very simple person,” Guldemond says. “I don’t like technology, in terms of the passive entertaining variety.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate modern transportation or the house he lives in.
“It’s just all these devices to help us get our thoughts out fast are kind of deteriorating the value of our thoughts,” he says.
Mother Mother is at the Royal with Hannah Georgas on Tuesday, December 11. Doors open at 6 p.m. Show starts about 8 p.m. Tickets are sold out.
