Mommy and Daddy

Mommy and Daddy EP

5.0

{Busy Signal Records}

Imagine the scene: me, in a dirty T-shirt and pajama pants, hanging out of my fifth-story, living room window, frantically waving at the UPS truck that has just rounded the corner. I’m doing this because the UPS dude just might, by some bizarre series of occurrences, miss dropping off my package. And that would be very, very bad, since in that package is my copy of the Mommy and Daddy EP. Never has a single disc of aluminum been so awaited by yours truly. So awaited that by now, you probably know all about the “electro-punk Sonny and Cher,” the fuzzy bass and the drum machine, the screamy, scuzzy New Order-meets-Le Tigre-meets-Liars vibe, which if experienced live, melts the puny souls of mere mortals.

Now, I could go on and on about how good the EP is (listening to it at least once a week should be enforced by law, and the government should blare it out of those pesky foghorns that are normally reserved for alerting the population of incoming air raids), but, in a sudden thrust of inspiration, I have decided not to talk about the EP at all. Instead, I will recount to you the journey that brought this CD to my doorstep (not the UPS dude’s journey, but my own).

I had been in NYC only a few weeks when, while checking out records stores near Astor Place, I stumbled upon a flyer on a lamppost. Why this particular flyer caught my attention, I don’t know, as flyers on lampposts are quite common things in this world, and one has the tendency to easily disregard them. Anyway, right there on the flyer, was a digital image of a man and a woman, looking quite electro-chic, with the name Mommy and Daddy in block letters below them. It took me a while to figure out that the man and woman formed a band (I am what you call, slow) but as soon as I did, they seemed even more kickass, so I jotted down the Web site address and went back to my pad. I downloaded some MP3s off of the site, and after listening to them, I wrote an e-mail in a jiffy to the band. It went somewhere along the lines of: “Like, omigod, I think you guys are totally cool, and your songs kickass; and I really wanna see you guys live, but when are you playing an all ages show, blah blah blah…” And a few minutes later, in a true nonarrogant rock star fashion, the Vivian Sarratt (that would be Mommy) e-mailed me back. Thus began ourfriendship, and myplight to plug M&D in just about every story I’ve written since.

It’s true, now that I think about it, that so far Mommy and Daddy have made up for about 45 percent of my entire career in music journalism. They have introduced me to bands, record labels, friends and records that I doubt I would have discovered without them. I hope that this EP (and the upcoming album) will completely annihilate the last of the nu-metal bands that are slowly but surely fading into oblivion, and that Vivian and bandmate Edmond Hallas will lead marching, rabid fans into a musical revolution comparable to what the Sex Pistols did to the English youth in the late ’70s. If not, you can still play the Mommy and Daddy EP alone, jumping around your room, leading a rock revolution of your own.