Mommyheads and Lemon Sparks

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 pierside 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 KIDstands as perhaps the most cohesive representation of The Mommyheads’ glorious eccentricities thus far.