by Chris Coplan (@CCoplan)
South East London's own Lerryn warns us that taking As A Mother at face value is "a mistake, and slightly reductive." The five-track effort is far more universal than mere motherhood (even as Lerryn wrote the EP around her own pregnancy), exploring ideas like "Love. Comfort. Newness. Happiness. Feeling lost. Feeling at home. Feeling loved. Confusion. Self-belief. The passing of time. The inevitability of change." I can promise my own experience with As A Mother will operate far beyond mere face value.
I've got my own weird, multifaceted feelings about family/parenthood. For one, I've become a step-parent in the last few years, and it's a weird, glorious change unlike any other I've ever experienced. It’s a massive shift, mind you, that's also come amid a move to "no contact" with my own mother (that's the longest of stories). Perhaps the piece de resistance, I've also spent the last couple years grieving my own father, but my heaps and heaps of familial drama and emotions shouldn't bum you out — it's helped me recognize the wonders of As A Mother as this wondrous snapshot of the true power and confines of being a parent when you may or may not be prepared/adequate enough/etc.
As much as Lerryn's press for the EP may rebel against the matronly connotations, there's simply no denying those sentiments. Opening track "You Are My Love" is a kind of nursery rhyme from a young, modern parent — the sweet, sauntering pop that we'd all rather share with our kids than the drivel we heard growing up (I still can't hear "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" without feeling some complicated deluge of memories and emotions). The same goes for "Be Brilliant To Me" — it's the jangly, Beta Band-ian synth-pop you could hear on some English version of Yo Gabba Gabba! Now, perhaps that's all my own reading and preferences, but that "alt" quality really sets the stage for the true value of these songs.
"You Are My Love" bypasses the parent-child confines, and it feels like it's a glowing celebration of how you see love post-parentification. The way the mind not only swells with love, but the way it forges connections and pathways between a child, a partner, an evening, etc. Meanwhile, "Be Brilliant to Me" is akin to a prayer — not only to a new child, but a partner or an indifferent world, to have your love met with equal joy and wonder. It's a hope for more joy and love because your heart's so dang full and anything else might render you perpetually inert.
In short, both of these tracks capture the way the mind has evolved post-parenthood to process emotions, and how the quaint fog of sentimentality has forever altered your understandings of yourself and the world. In that way, Lerryn sets the tone for a more robust exploration of how parenthood becomes less about a new person or life event but this coalescence of emotional and logical capabilities. You find yourself both new and still touching that old version of yourself, and in that weird middle space you can trace the arc of your life and ideas and feelings in a really profound way. There are huge ideas and emotions battling in your person, and these cuts exemplify the caterpillar-to-butterfly transition into a world where your heart often does seem to live outside itself in the best and most awful ways.
If those two tracks are songs you'd sing to a wee little baby, then "It Won't Be Long" and "A House" may be things best hummed to yourself. The former finds Lerryn pulling back some of that initial pop oomph for something that rides the line between alt-country twang and mournful desert rock. "A House" goes further still, blending in shreds of ambient, folkloric guitar, and electronic noise for something with the right amount of texture and uncertainty. I love these sharp but subtle changes — it sees Lerryn further play with the music as a means of setting/bucking expectations. That, and it fosters a sense of physical and emotional distance with these more solemn tones/sentiments.
Ultimately, both of these more personal ballads are perfect for Lerryn to offer a counter to the deep well of emotion she's explored so far. If the first two tracks are the joys of motherhood, these next two find her afraid or confused by these events and emotions she grapples with. The refrain in "It Won't Be Long" feels like something she's telling herself or even a partner, as she tries to control the changes and the new way she sees the world. Meanwhile, "A House" features several versions of "Have you done this before," perhaps to hold onto this strange newness, and "You're a family of four," as if she must count the world itself for it to make sense.
It's these two cuts that especially spoke to me given my family experiences. Soothing a new child, or declaring the neatness of your own beating heart, will always be strange, but feeling totally unprepared, and stealing a moment in the dark to understand it all is something that rings perpetually true. It's very much the way that parenting myself and parental grief have weirdly aligned themselves — you can try to control these feelings, but really all you're doing is counting waves in this unrelenting ocean. You are beholden to something so powerful and affirming, and you feel a little bad about those reactions, but they're just as important as your loving hand and soothing voice, and knowing that you are small and weak in the face of all this change and universal love can be a tool to keep your head on straight. It doesn't always work, but you sure need to try.
The two sides of Lerryn's own experiences seem to fully align with the title track. Musically, the song's a bit more chipper and cheery, but there's also great vocals that add a certain solemnity even as that feels more robust and sturdy. It's also the track where, through that balancing, Lerryn touches on what she calls a "period of profound creative reckoning" following her pregnancy. It's something similar I felt after my own dad's passing, and how I could feel the creative juices flowing and understand my own work like never before. To me, that's represented in Lerryn's sonic balancing, as she finds a literal sweet spot as both a gentle singer-songwriter and someone with a more ravenous approach to walking down unbeaten paths.
Said creative freedom only happens because of the process she's accomplished within the structure of "As A Mother." More specifically, she has the line, "To take time for you, I need time for me." That's perhaps the shining thesis statement of this record. Being a parent isn't about sacrifice but rather contextualization. To blend and merge the past and worst parts of yourself to be the best you can be: warm and accessible if not also totally imperfect. A ballad about the strength of mothers and fathers: to be a person as much as a provider, and to know that both "parts" connect in a wondrous feedback loop. You are capable because you're afraid not to be. You will mess up but you have the heart to learn from it. In short, the true roadmap of being a glowing battery of love and devotion in all aspects of your life. It's all tied together — parent, lover, friend, child, etc. — and you can navigate it all better when you release yourself of the burden of being one thing and then another. We're all mostly trying to make it work in real-time, and the best we can do is come to the table of our many responsibilities with an earnest joy and the knowledge it's OK to break a few eggs along the way.
Again, I welcome the idea that this is all a reflection of my own very involved journey to become a good enough husband and father figure despite the many potholes I've encountered both long-term and in recent years. But be you parent or not, As A Mother should awaken in you some very massive things. For one, an understanding that life and its changes are a journey, and that plotting our path can often be the best teacher. Love — wherever it's directed or its original source — is ultimately the expression of wanting to be connected to the world, as Lerryn sings, "You are my love/and our lives from here begin." Most of all, As A Mother should remind you to feel what you feel, and for whom or whatever it may be, with the utmost intention, curiosity, and appreciation. So come to the EP with whatever family woes/joys you may have — I promise you you'll feel part of something even grander than you'd imagined.