WHAT’S GOING ON: Mother Mother Jube Jube
The plus side of the pandemic – hey, when life gives a gristle, just give a whistle! – is that many musical artists spent their isolation time making new music no one has yet heard live: Experiments, collaborations, remakes, reimaginings, you name it. Creativity flourished.
Enter Mother Mother – one of the greatest modern Canadian rock bands expected to be creative. Fans have been waiting for their return: Monday, May 2 at the Jubilee Auditorium.
Since their last concert here in February 2019 (read review), Mother Mother came out with its new album Inside in 2021, on which is a bold musical experiment that deserves another mention: Hayloft II, the sequel to Mother Mother’s 2009 hit Hayloft. You remember the one where pop catches her daughter making out with some guy in the barn? She sings, “My daddy’s got a gun, you better run.” The story picks up in Hayloft II: Turns out that Pop did shoot the boyfriend, setting the barn on fire in the process, apparently, promoting the daughter to run away to “drugs and punks and blood on the street.” She returns for revenge. “My baby’s got a gun, I better run,” sings Pop – but not for long because he gets shot, too. A frantic arrangement ends with a slow bit, “She’s not a bad kid … she had to kill Pop.”
Artists rearranging their own songs is nothing new. Elton John did it with Candle in the Wind for the late Princess Di, and again just this year with Cold Heart, a duet with Dua Lipa that includes elements of Rocketman and three other Elton songs. He did it while recording his latest studio album, and of course it’s called The Lockdown Sessions.
Mother Mother seems to have taken it a step further, crafting an entirely new original song yet one that has strong harmonic and lyrical echoes of the original. This whole thing could be a movie – or maybe a Broadway musical? I know, I know: Don’t give them ideas. They seem to have enough of those already.
Better Late Than Never For Maroon 5
Adam Levine’s Hit Machine also has new music to bring on a world tour that was supposed to come to Edmonton in the summer of 2020 – and we all know what happened next. The new date which will now be at Rogers Place on August 5. The pre-sale starts on April 26.
Having seen quite enough of Levine on TV and radio – or have we? – fans around the world are looking forward to this. Maroon 5 has some primo gigs scheduled, including the Pyramids of Giza on May 3, and an outdoor gig in Tel Aviv expected to draw more than 100,000 people.
