O My Heart＜Colored Vinyl＞

In some cases, artsy groups that delight in being self-indulgent and eccentric aren't terribly worried about accessibility. Their attitude is that if you appreciate and comprehend what they're doing, great -- and if not, so be it. But Mother Mother's second album, O My Heart, is one of those CDs that achieves a healthy, attractive balance of accessibility and artsy experimentation. It isn't as though alternative pop/rock/folk-rock offerings such as "Wrecking Ball," "Arms Tonight," and "Wisdom" are apologetic about being quirky and skewed; in fact, this part-male, part-female group from Canada sound like they are having a great deal of fun providing off-center lyrics. But while O My Heart certainly doesn't go out of its way to be accessible lyrically, it is quite accessible musically. O My Heart has something that other "artsy-as-hell-and-proud-of-it" discs lack: hooks. There are hooks galore on this 2008 release. So even if listeners have a hard time absorbing a song's lyrics and figuring out what the song is trying to get across, Mother Mother's abundance of honest-to-God hooks make O My Heart easy to digest on a musical and melodic level. Musically, O My Heart is often infectious, and that musical infectiousness pulls the listener in regardless of how abstract the lyrics can be. Mother Mother showed a lot of promise on their appealing, if imperfect, debut album, Touch Up; they still have some growing and developing to do, but all things considered, O My Heart is a creative success for the Canadian unit. ~ Alex Henderson