Who are they?
Mommy and Daddy is a electropunk duo from New York, USA, known individually as Vivian Sarratt and Edmond Hallas. They describe themselves thus:
"mommy and daddy are the leading new york power couple. with stripped down drum loops, fuzzed out melodic bass lines, and trade off boy/girl vocals, mommy and daddy sound like a tag team steel cage match between le tigre and liars on one side, and the b-52s and pil on the other."
from http://www.mommyanddaddy.com
Vivian "a half-Vietnamese
flautist"
1 and Edmund "a 'white as laundry'
punk guitarist"
2 met in a
philosophy class at
George Mason University, USA and bonded over "a mutual hatred of logic"
3. That was five years ago. They've been making music together ever since, and
married in June 2000. It's reported that they didn't 'click' musically straightaway and "intriguingly thrashed around in
folk, then
metal before settling into their current
incarnation - a mish-mosh of grunting
bass guitar, punk vocals and the
ubiquitous thump of a cheap drum machine."
4 Edmund declares that their name came from a moment when he turned to their cat and said "Mommy and Daddy are practising!"
5.
"'Ohhh, that’s it!,'" Hallas remembers. "The name just stuck. It’s kind of creepy, it’s kind of cool."
from http://www.nypress.com
The Sound
"the formula is simple: when she sings and pushes buttons, he plays bass guitar. when he sings and hits the machine, she is on bass."
from http://www.mommyanddaddy.com
That's all there is to it. mommy and daddy have a bass guitar and a sequencer, and take it in turns to push, pluck and sing. Each of the 7"
singles has a
mommy side and a
daddy side. This means that mommy and daddy's music has two distinct sounds, one lead by Vivian's "faintly-bored sounding intonations"
6 who in the opinion of one journalist "sounds like she'd rip out your throat and pour a Margarita down the gaping hole."
7 and the other Edmund's staccato NYC whine.
'Paparazzi vipers!/Why can't I live a normal life?'/She says from behind sunglasses/Next year she'll be a Stepford wife8
-
Live How You Listen
- Début album
- X Factor
- What is the Function?
- Seek You
- Outside
- Together
- Roundhouse Robot
- The Meeting
- I Mean, Could He Buy Me This*
- Beachy
- Fill in the Lines
- Diguise
- Take It!
-
Mommy and Daddy
- 4 song CDEP
- I Mean Could He Buy Me This?*
- X-Factor
- Together
- Outside
For current tour dates and to find out Vivian or Edmond's favourite movies, visit
http://www.mommyanddaddy.com
1http://www.newyorkmetro.com
2http://www.newyorkmetro.com
3http://www.newyorkmetro.com
4from BREAKIN' POINT http://www.mommyanddaddy.com/press.html
5www.nypress.com
6&7http://www.drownedinsound.com
8from Permed Past Her Prime
*These variations in title are from www.mommyanddaddy.com. As I am not sure which is correct, I have transcribed them verbatim.