“Sorry, Mom” is an exclamation that every former punk teenager remembers shouting apologetically to their ever-suffering mother. And, according to the drummer for the appropriately titled band, Sorry, Mom, Taryn Gangi, that was the idea. “It just came from the idea that when you’re playing loud, obnoxious punk music in your parents’ basement, which is usually what punk musicians are doing, you’re usually apologizing to your parents for all the horrible sounds that you’re creating.”
OFM caught up with the three-piece femme, queer, punk band as they piled into Gangi’s Toyota Venza heading to practice. Gangi gave a spontaneous advertisement for the car while waiting for frontperson Juno Moreno to join them. “It is such a phenomenal car,” gushes Gangi. “There’s a new one out if you want, but it’s a beautiful car, very spacious and lots of room in the back, good trunk room, moonroof. It doesn’t get better than this.”
The band just dropped their debut album babyface on Friday. And that’s a title they say predates most of the songs on the album. In fact, the album’s title inspired a lot of the album’s themes. “Oh, I don’t remember having a specific moment, where I named it. I just kind of remember being like, ‘Oh, yeah, we were going to call the second album babyface,’” Moreno says. “And I said that like two years ago, and then we’ve never ever thought about any other names.” Gangi confirms that. “A lot of the ideas of growing up and losing your youth and all that classic punk stuff was born from that babyface concept that we already had the name for.”
For bassist Kari Estes, the new album can best be described as “a sampler platter of what we can do … A lot of new stuff, a lot of old stuff. A charcuterie board!”
For Moreno, it’s really important that the album doesn’t center men. “Something I like to hold myself to is I’ve never written a song about a man,” Moreno explains. “I think that it’s really important for young people, specifically young queer people, to have music that doesn’t center men, specifically.” But Moreno grows tired of the pressure to be serious at all times in queer music. “I try and write music for queer people that’s silly and happy and funny to fill that gap that exists, at least for me.” Moreno says that their songs aren’t based on true stories. But Gangi says “the emotion that they are born from are real.”
Fans who pull up the album on any streaming service might notice the record label listed as Brandy Melville Records. If you’re skeptical that the famous Italian women’s clothier would sponsor a band who once wrote a song called “I Fucked Your Mom,” you’re on to something. “Oh, no, your instincts are right. When you’re independent and you upload your music to streaming services, you are required to list something in the record label section. But the fun thing is you can you can put whatever you want…When we recorded our first EP, we were at a recording studio that was above a Brandy Melville; it was on the second floor, the Brandy Melville’s [was] on the first floor…I hope we don’t get sued. We’re gonna see what happens. So far, so good.”
They cite Green Day, particularly the American Idiot album, as well as Mitski and Jeff Rosenstock, as their greatest influences. But their song “Teeth,” which Gangi admits sounds like the Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” isn’t actually based on that famous tune. “I just heard that song for the first time recently,” Moreno insists about the famous Foo Fighters’ track. We informed the band that Dave Grohl has admitted that he thought “Everlong” sounded like a Sonic Youth song. Moreno says, “I don’t think I’ve ever made it through a Sonic Youth song to the end.” So apparently it’s just a case of great minds thinking alike.
You can’t preorder babyface on Brandy Melville Records as it, sadly, doesn’t exist. But you can order the album as a digital album, CD, or vinyl on the band’s Bandcamp. The band’s doing a run of live shows with Froggy, culminating in an appearance at the Boston Calling Music Festival, so you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram to keep up with tours and other updates.
