Momma
In a quiet suburb of Calabasas, two teens once passed guitar chords and diary entries like secret notes. Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten met in high school and began writing songs together almost as soon as they became friends. By 2018 they released their debut album Interloper on Danger Collective Records, a scrappy bedroom-pop collection that already hinted at their future. Evocative of Phase and Girlpool, Interloper distilled “the melodrama and humdrum of adolescent life” into raw, sardonic indie-rock. Tracks were short and confessional – as one review put it, the record felt like “passing notes back and forth in class,” each a burst of off-the-cuff honesty.
The next step was dramatic. In 2020 Momma defied expectations with Two of Me, a boldly ambitious concept album. Over a summer break from college, they wrote songs that together formed an alternate-reality small town they called “The Bug House”, which according to the pair represents this sort of “underground purgatory” The result was surprisingly theatrical. Momma themselves noted they switched off lead and rhythm guitars within the same song, reflecting how close they’d become in the studio, “being alone with you is like being alone with myself,” as Etta later joked. Two of Me felt more grown-up and ominous than the debut; a dreamlike small-town drama captured in lush indie-rock textures.
By 2022, after moving cross-country to Brooklyn, Momma shed even more of their scrappy shell. Their third album Household Name was crafted in a proper studio (not a bedroom) with multi-instrumentalist producer Aron Ritch and drummer Zach Capitti-Fenton. Gone was the purely fictional narrative and instead, the group mined their own lives for the first time.
Then came their most recent chapter. The long whirlwind of 2022 –touring in vans and on bunkbeds, far from their California roots became the crucible for Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025). Both Friedman and Weingarten describe that chaotic summer as a time of parallel thrills and turmoil. On tour, romances and friendships began and broke; infidelity and loneliness loomed, and the only thing they could do was write. The new album, their fourth, documents that period in vivid detail. From the first track (“Sincerely”) through the last, Blue Sky reads like a diary. Polyvinyl’s notes describe a “charmed and turbulent summer” when “life-altering upheaval” hit them during a “whirlwind mid-2022 tour”, and you can feel it in each song.
At its heart, this record feels like a confessional , a mature and gentle “letting go.” As they put it, the album is “the sound of a band maturing and moving on up” ; a fitting close to the arc that began in Calabasas.
Throughout these shifts in studio sound, Momma’s live spirit has only grown. Over 2024–25 they’ve turned their charismatic odd lot indie into a concert ritual, drawing sold out crowds wherever they go. A spring 2025 headlining tour notched eight sold-out dates (including a blitz through Austin, Memphis and a hometown Warsaw show).
In April 2025 Momma announced more tour dates through the fall, including a series of amphitheater gigs supporting The Marías All those new dates lead to a climax: on November 20 they will headline Brooklyn Steel – the largest NYC venue they’ve ever booked. Playing to a hometown crowd (with special guest Narrow Head) will be a dream realized for the two high-school friends.