Mother Sun

Mother Sun

Mother Sun build and inhabit a world of natural influences, revolving art pop and pastoral psychedelia on fourth LP ‘Meadow 6’. The British Columbia based band’s shapeshifting melodies interlock and segway into elements of motorik krautrock, jazz funk, late 60s folk and dreamy power pop on a journey through a vibrant green countryside; down the well into underground tunnels, through the roots of tree, past the busy beehive through rolling wheat fields and beyond.

“On this record with a lot of the lyrics, I became really interested in plants and humans’ relationship with them and the earth; gathering & farming, commodifying & exploiting, researching & controlling, using to alter consciousness. A lot of the early musical ideas started sitting outside playing guitar in the garden. I think with these songs we wanted to create a record that sonically speaks to the magic that is constantly unfolding all around in the natural world.”

- Jared Doherty

Recorded over the past few years between stints touring their last record ‘Train of Thought’, the band went into self-production mode during a period of changes in their lives, with each member changing addresses during the album’s unhurried development. Song arrangements evolved on the road and early singles ‘Marbles’, ‘Yellowbee’ and ‘Good Morning’ became staples in the band’s shifting setlist.

While a few songs were built from songwriter Doherty’s home recordings, the band mostly kept to their practice of recording drums, bass and guitars live in a room together as a starting point. The room itself changed as the band’s HQ at guitarist Milio Pagnotta’s Holy Cow Studio drastically shifted from a basement suite home studio to its new iteration: built from the foundation of an old abandoned trailer at his new home in the woods a thirty minute drive out of town. 

“This garden is growing weeds / with all the sun it needs / in climate controlling steel / reach for the ceiling” - Giant Bog

An escape is never far away, and ‘Meadow 6’ evokes a sense of location, a new area unlocked on the world map. The artwork compiles film photographs taken on travels in recent years to create a surreal environment. Photos of buildings taken in transit on tours of western Canada perch impossibly on mossy rocks, grain silos on the prairies become part of a leafy cityscape and dandelions grow out of Japanese castles on floating mountains in the sky. 

“I wanted the art to feel a bit like an old RPG, like you’re seeing a sprawling area for the first time from the deck of an airship in a game like Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy. That’s where the songs live, combining bits of these nostalgic past worlds with new textures and feelings.” - Doherty

Small stories fill in the details, like the saga of sentient strawberry robots’ attempt to escape a greenhouse factory in the motorik ‘Giant Bog’ or the imagery of civilization overgrown by unchecked weeds observed while climbing a tree in ‘Mustard Seed’. Others take the listener through a microscope into a garden of piano arpeggios in ‘Pink Petal’ and slo-mo caffeinated inner dialogue of ‘Green Tea’. 

“‘Meadow 6’ is an invitation into a timeline of another world, a less cynical world. I think it’s a world that exists in the magic of a small detail when we give it attention, a beam of light pulling a new green leaf out of the ground. A step outside and a jump in the water, a rebirth, a renewal.” - Doherty