Interview: Momma Discuss Their Unfiltered & Unapologetic Fourth Album 'Welcome to My Blue Sky'

Momma’s Allegra Weingarten and Etta Friedman bare all and step into a new era of life on their fourth album ‘Welcome to My Blue Sky’ – a raw, real, and entirely unapologetic indie rock triumph.

Stream: ‘Welcome to My Blue Sky’ – Momma

I hope people fall in love with these songs in a different way than ‘Household Name.’ I want them to become anthems for people.

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Momma have laid all their cards on the table.

Released April 4^th, 2025 through Polyvinyl Records, their new album Welcome to My Blue Sky handles everything from infidelity to drinking to nostalgia for a childhood you can’t return to. Despite it being a record detailing each way they screwed up during this summer, neither of the indie darlings are ashamed of the content, nor was it a question of whether to share: “It was the only thing on our mind,” said Allegra Weingarten the night I sat down with them, just a few days before the record’s release.

Welcome to My Blue Sky - Momma — Welcome to My Blue Sky – Momma

Despite having years of experience at writing witty, biting rock songs about being unapologetically themselves and not feeling like the best people, the summer of 2022 marked a loss of innocence. Amidst all the hazards of tour, they emerged on the other side of it entirely different people. It put them out, heading home with their tails between their legs.

Etta Friedman, the band’s other founding member, sighed, settling into their seat. “I think I had the most transitional period of my life since I left for college. It’s like turning eighteen and realizing you’re an independent person now, and then being a completely different human being every day until you turn 21. That summer, we flipped everything upside down.”

“Yeah. I’ve written songs about having my heart broken and being the one that’s sad and pining. That’s been a continuous theme in my own writing. Ever since that summer and situation, I have had a way more complex view of myself. I am able to hurt people, and that’s hard to realize. I don’t think I’m a bad person though,” Weingarten added.

“That’s exactly what I mean. There were so many times Allegra and I looked at each other like, ‘Do we suck?’ and ‘I don’t know if this is the person that I thought I was, that I’m capable of doing things that hurt people.’ I thought I was just a victim to it, and coming to terms that I could be on the other end was really important.”

There’s no elusivity to Welcome to My Blue Sky.

In fact, Weingarten and Friedman are looking forward to you asking them. After all, it’s so inseparable from the record that they wouldn’t be able to avoid it even if they wanted to. “I’m just excited to hear what people, especially the people directly involved in songs and don’t know it, have to say,” Friedman said with a small, creeping smile. “I think there’s a lot I hope people take from it, like that f*ing up is okay, that making mistakes is totally okay. Sometimes you have to do it to be better off later.”

Weingarten nodded. “I feel like this is the first time people that enjoy our music will really get to know who we are as people, I think. It’s a very personal thing that we’re laying out on the table, but the more personal you are in your music, the more people are going to connect to it. I hope people fall in love with these songs in a different way than Household Name. I want them to become anthems for people.”

And anthemic they are. Welcome to My Blue Sky keeps you hooked as it feeds you details of what really happened that summer, ones that ride the line between being deeply personal and widely relatable. Opening with “Sincerely,” the record offers up a prologue, teasing the story they’re itching to tell you. Gentle voices float over acoustic guitar and soft piano, asking if they can wish away everything that happened this summer. When the two sing, “No return address – I love you to death, but I’m outside the door,” the instrumental fades, giving way to what’s to come.

When the synths swell for “I Want You (Fever),” we begin to get a real picture of what the members of Momma are walking away from. The song paints a picture of messy breakups, new hookups, and gossip galore. The repetition of “Pick up and leave her, I want you, fever” is spellbinding in the same way as an affair is, deliciously fun despite the moral dilemma at the center of the song. Momma are hypnotizing the subject into picking them, and it works on the listener just as well.

Part of this infectious nature is a switch in song structure from their normal alt-rock style found on their previous record, Household Name, one that echoes the influences of their ’90s predecessors. That album leaned full-force into the constant comparisons the band receives to groups like Veruca Salt, Breeders, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. While Momma perform fantastically within that subgenre, anyone that thinks they sound just like a grunge band is simply not listening to enough grunge. There’s always been a clean element to their music, one dripping in nostalgia and fun, so it makes complete sense that they shifted in this direction.

“Stay All Summer” is a fantastic example of this. Weingarten and Friedman bounce back and forth on this track with a flirtatious optimism. “I would stall and stay all summer, babe, if you want me to.” Absent is the heavy lead guitar and thumping drum beat in favor of steady chords, framing something as conflicting as difficult as leaving your partner for someone else as the only right choice.

“I think one lesson we learned making the last record is that less is more,” admitted Weingarten. “It’s not that I don’t love playing me some guitar and writing a lead part, but there were so many instances where it was time to add a lead and I tried a million different things. The thing that ended up sounding the best was just a little doom doom doom riff. It’s just what fit, and you can’t force complex guitar parts or songwriting if it’s not what the song warrants.”

“Yeah,” Friedman agreed. “It’s super like, ‘Does this feel good right now? Yes? Okay, let’s keep going.”

“We didn’t feel like we had to prove that we’re badass guitar players, because who cares? We are badass guitar players.”

We didn’t feel like we had to prove that we’re badass guitar players, because who cares? We are badass guitar players.

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**Despite this shift, Welcome to My Blue Sky settles even deeper into the sound fans have fallen for on Household Name.**

“We got to accept that we can do whatever we want. It doesn’t all have to sound the same, and you really see that here. No two songs have the same vibes. It was super scary at the beginning, because we were pretty aware of the fact that we might disappoint the major Household Name fans. But you have to be confident in your decision making, and that if you like it, others will like it. We decided to be really selfish when it came to writing, because we’re the ones who have to play these songs for years and years and years to come,” Weingarten said, voice dripping with finality.

This isn’t to say there’s not something still for fans of Household Name, despite Momma’s aforementioned anxieties about this. Those who come for heavy guitar and angst for miles have the absolute ripper that is “Last Kiss.” “We had the chords for a while,” Weingarten said, “but we could not figure out where we were taking that song. All we knew is that we liked it, and we really wanted to keep it around, but it was super challenging.”

That being said, this record stands as their strongest by a mile due to this very selfishness. The band found themselves able to really switch up their sound. In collaboration with their producer and bandmate Aron Kobayashi-Ritch, they could experiment with more electronic elements, particularly on “Bottle Blonde,” a Frou-Frou-esque love letter to their past selves.

“We wrote [‘Bottle Blonde’] in a hotel room just on acoustic, and we had it as a voice memo,” explained Friedman. “It was the very last one for the record, and we wanted to do something different because it sounded so pretty just acoustic, and, like, we already had so many songs that were guitar-based! When we went to go demo it with Aron, we had three tracks with some pretty random references, and Aron had this drum loop. We were instantly like, ‘Oh, my God. You understand the assignment. It’s exactly what we wanted.’ I just could not have predicted it sounding that way.”

What also benefits from the selfishness is the lyrics. “I’m more proud of every song on this record lyrically than anything on Household Name, to be completely honest. I mean, not speaking for Etta’s songs,” Weingarten laughed, “but in terms of my own, these lyrics are so much more mature and honest.”

While previous albums had their fair share of writing in character, that element is nearly entirely absent here. The only song in someone else’s voice is “Rodeo,” which is sung from the perspective of their scorned ex-lovers. Despite it not being their own thoughts, the act of self-deprecation through the eyes of others somehow makes it one of the most honest songs on the album.

“‘Rodeo’ really fell into place,” she said. “The reason why it’s my favorite song on the record is because I don’t even remember writing it since it was so fast. It almost feels like we didn’t write it at all. I have crazy imposter syndrome when I listen to it. There’s no not corny way to say this, but that song wrote itself.”

The only other song on here that rivals it in authenticity is “How to Breathe,” their first song explicitly about a lesbian relationship. It’s tender and serene despite the electric guitar, a balance that wasn’t always there: “There was this bridge that used to be super rock and roll, way heavier. It’s so much better how it is now.” Friedman’s voice bobs and floats across the string section, so honest that they read as nervous as they sing, “There’s a silhouette across my world with her and I as the outline.”

As Momma ride the back of this record, you can watch them receive their delayed gratification in real time. Three years after releasing a record about wanting to be rockstars, the band finds themselves playing on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, doing a plethora of press, and setting off on their next headlining tour.

“There were tears shed, whiskey shots taken. It was awesome, really fun stuff,” said Weingarten.

“It can be hard to step back and understand that we’re like, actually doing this,” confessed Friedman. “Moments like Kimmel where we can all step back and hug and be like, ‘Holy shit. I can’t believe we’ve done this…’ are the most beautiful part of working in a collaborative project.”

**In Welcome to My Blue Sky, Momma have been able to take the craziest, most personal time of their life and flip it into a record that’s raw, real, and entirely unapologetic.**

It manages to be their most expansive work and transform their discography, shrugging off the endless nineties-era comparisons and creating a reflective album that lets their fans in for the very first time.

As they step away from who they used to be, both Friedman and Weingarten enter into a new era of their lives and their music, one that’s marked by maturation and the willingness to lose a little to gain a lot.

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