Mom Jeans Moves Forward By Going Back to the 00’s in Newest Album ‘Sweet Tooth’

Written by Zoe Tevyaw

Mom Jeans takes a bite out of pop punk with their third album Sweet Tooth, released in February of 2022. The historically DIY indie band has fully embraced their early aughts pop punk and emo inspiration, polishing their signature sound with more production and catchiness than listeners have heard and expected from them. Sweet Tooth provides the same emotional themes and intensity that past records Puppy Love and Best Buds offered colored by this nostalgic and higher energy sheen.

“What’s Up?”, the first single & video released in preparation for Sweet Tooth, dropped back in September of 2021 introducing fans to the newly evolved sounds to anticipate from the next full-length project. The track is an exploration of depression and self-hatred through the lens of disconnecting with a loved one. The video, a colorful playthrough of the track, is a jarring contrast from the subject matter that Mom Jeans has been known to provide to audiences – not quite off-putting enough to lose focus, but just enough to keep viewers engaged.

The group’s live shows are much of the same: heavy, emotional lyricism meets angsty emo sounds against a bright pink and yellow backdrop as the members thrash and jump around in gym shorts and tye dye. The clash somehow makes sense, though, and touches on the nature of coexisting with sadness without letting dark feelings overtake life – something Mom Jeans has grappled with and sung about throughout their musical journey.

Coming from Berkeley, California, Mom Jeans has always incorporated that Bay Area sound in their songs but never more so than on Sweet Tooth directly derived from area alumni Green Day and similar acts. The band has existed in the “Midwest emo” scene, a subgenre that doesn’t actually belong to the Midwest, but comes from the suburbia-hating sentiments often associated with that area. “Midwest emo” has developed out of garage-band sounds, often with intricate guitars and story or theme-driven vocal lines, and has begun intertwining with local punk and hardcore scenes around the country. Major players would include The Front Bottoms, Modern Baseball, Car Seat Headrest, and - of course - Mom Jeans.

But Mom Jeans breaks out of the Midwest scene tropes more with Sweet Tooth, offering a new catchiness and streamlining their musical ideas in such a manner as Yellowcard or Blink-182 that has opened up their palatability and allowed them to break through to larger audiences. By polishing their production and songwriting while still keeping in line with the sounds of their home genre, the group has further bridged the gap between the DIY and pop punk spaces in a new way. This indie foundation also separates Mom Jeans from other groups attempting to simply emulate the 2000s pop punk sounds or trying to recreate early Fall Out Boy or Jimmy Eat World.

Sweet Tooth is available to listen to everywhere, and the group will be embarking on a United Kingdom and Europe tour in early 2023.