Prog-pop cult heroes The Mommyheads have announced the most ambitious album of their nearly four-decade career, CONEY ISLAND KID, arriving Friday, September 19 via FANFAR! Records in Europe and Mommyhead Music for the rest of the world. Pre-orders are available now.
A watershed release for The Mommyheads, CONEY ISLAND KID marks the venerable NYC-based band’s 15th studio LP and first-ever foray into concept album terrain. Highlights include the idiosyncratic first single, “Why Aren’t You Smiling,” joined by an official music video, directed by The Mommyheads founder/frontman Adam Elk.
WATCH “WHY AREN’T YOU SMILING” OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO:
PRE-ORDER CONEY ISLAND KID
Last year saw The Mommyheads reaching new creative heights with GENIUS KILLER, hailed by Bay Area alternative newsweekly The Bohemian as “a tight, self-assured affair that sounds all the more youthful for its maturity.” CONEY ISLAND KID continues in that tradition, opening with an eclectic suite of technicolor prog-pop that uses archetypal Coney Island imagery to convey themes of desperation and soul-searching, complete with pier side ambience.
The skeletal acoustics on “Spookarama” call back to the whimsical woodsy gloom of 1989’s now-classic debut, ACORN, while elsewhere, songs such as the epic title track (arguably the closest the band has come to full-on interpolating Genesis) and the angelic tone poem, “Onset, MA,” see The Mommyheads continue to gracefully channel existential anxiety and progressive influences in equal measure. Having devoted a lifetime to evolution, both in terms of sound and the ever-increasing scope of their ideas, CONEY ISLAND KID stands as perhaps the most cohesive representation of The Mommyheads’ glorious eccentricities thus far.
THE MOMMYHEADS
CONEY ISLAND KID
(FANFAR! Records / Mommyhead Music)
Release Date: Friday, September 19, 2023
Tracklist:
Coney Island Kid
Artificial Island
Spookarama
Solemn By The Sea
Suburban Office Park
Learning To Live
Why Aren’t You Smiling
Such Beautiful Things
Onset, MA
Soul’s Aquarium
The Mommyheads will mark CONEY ISLAND KID with a wide range of international live dates, including a series of historic shows joining longtime friend Per Sunding of Swedish indie pop legends Eggstone on his debut US live tour. The dates – which will see Sunding performing Eggstone music in America for the very first time ever, backed by members of The Mommyheads, The Apples in Stereo, and The B-52s – get underway September 20 with a special record release show at New York City’s DROM. Long beloved in Sweden, The Mommyheads will first head to Scandinavia for an eagerly anticipated headline tour (including additional dates with Sunding), before returning home for Drom30, Dromedary Records’ weekend-long celebration of independent rock, set for Sunday, September 17 at Catskill, NY’s The Avalon Lounge. Additional shows will be announced soon. For updates, please visit www.mommyheads.com/live.
THE MOMMYHEADS – TOUR 2023
SEPTEMBER
1 – Uppsala, SWE – Open Mind Records (12:00 Noon Acoustic Show)
1 – Orebro, SWE – Live At Heart Festival *
2 – Linköping, SWE – Festival Of The Midnight Sun *
5 – Falsterbro, Sweden – Ko Operativet På Fädriften †
6 – Malmo, SWE – Medley †
7 – Kristianstad, SWE – Kulturkvarteret
8 – Stockholm, SWE – Melody Box
9 – Vasteras, SWE – Global Living
17 – Catskill, NY – Drom30 @ The Avalon Lounge *
20 – New York, NY – DROM †
21 – Boston, MA – Lizard Lounge #
22 – Beacon, NY – Howland Cultural Center †
23 – Philadelphia, PA – The Royal in Glenside †
24 – Washington, DC – House of Sweden †
* Festival Appearance
† w/ Per Sunding of Eggstone
# w/ Per Sunding of Eggstone and Gravel Pit