Yung Mums have quickly established themselves as the reigning queens of shambolic-pop, the defacto female counterpart to Vancouver’s greaser-boy garage rock scene. These ladies’ various references to the hard living of the musician’s life – sleeping in punk squats, enduring sickness in the studio, and lots of heavy drinking – prove their pedigree as true-blue Vancouver rockers. With an aesthetic that makes a virtue of sloppiness and songs that celebrate a no-bullshit attitude, the Yung Mums breathe life into the cragged Id of rock ‘n roll. From the land of spilled beer and bloody house parties, I give you Yung Mums!

THE CONCEPT OF THE BAND

So by design Yung Mums was always meant to be an all-girl band, right? Is it just easier that way?

Amelia: Yeah. It’s nice to have girlfriends as well as do something productive together instead of just hanging out doing our nails. Not that I don’t love doing that, too.

Are The Dishrags like the spirit-archetype of Yung Mums? There are a lot of similarities between you guys and The Dishrags – both bands have island roots; both bands are three females; both bands embrace a kind of sloppy/badass-aesthetic.

Amelia: I’ve listened to The Dishrags before.

Julie: When we recorded with Felix there was this guy who came in and he was like, “Woah. Total Dishrags vibe.”

Morgan: We have more of a Kleenex/Liliput type sound.

Right. But Kleenex had four people in it. And they’re not from the island. OK, well then, what is the best power trio band, not necessarily all-girl?

All: Timecopz!

What is your band? Are you a garage band? A punk band?

Amelia: Kind of garage-punk.

What do you tell your mom what your band is?

Amelia: She says, “Oh, you play that music that makes me feel neurotic.” It makes her feel anxious.

Julie: Yeah, I can see that. Yung Mums have a lot of anxiety.

THE SONGS

What are the Yung Mums songs about?

Amelia: There’s a lot of “ooohing” and “aaahing.” Those are my favourite lyrics.

Morgan: All our songs are about the same things: not liking things or not wanting things.

Julie: Or being annoyed by things.

Morgan: It’s a pretty negative vibe. And the less amount of actual words, the better. “Through With You” and “Constant Contact” are about irritating friendships. So is “Ship.” Because you’re friends can drive you insane.

Julie: We’re short and we don’t like anything. Or, the songs are short. We’re not short. Only Morgan is short. It’s wasn’t a planned thing, but it turned out that every song was like, “I dont’ want to….I don’t want this…”

So can we go through song by song all the songs on the bandcamp? What’s Dead South about not wanting what specifically?

Amelia: Dead South is about being on a road trip, heading down to Portland.

Morgan: It is? What are the words to “Dead South”?

Julie: That’s actually kind of a nonsense song.

Morgan: I though it was about dying?

Amelia: Oh yeah, it is about dying, it’s about living free, being young, on the road.

I get it. Dying is kind of the undercurrent of that. What about “Cobra”?

Amelia: “Cobra” is about breaking up. I think. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be about a romantic break up, it can be a friendship break up. It’s kind of about being annoyed by friendships.

OK. What about “Shut It”? That seems like a tough song.

Amelia: It’s about people, like, overly, like ” This is what’s wrong with me, you know, and it’s really really sad,” and they go on and on with their problems to you. And you’re like, “Dude, let’s just hang out and have a fun time.” So shut it.

And “Through With You”; is that a break up song?

Amelia: It’s about like being at the bar and running into an ex-lover. Feeling awkward. You know how they give you a little look? Like,”I want to make you a really small.” And it’s like, “I’m not small. I’m big.”

Right. And “BC Budz” ?

Julie: Well, we got asked to do a song for the Bloodstains Over B.C., the comp.

Morgan: No! I asked if we could. I talked to Paul Laughton. And he was down.

Julie: Oh, she asked if we could. So we had to write a one-minute song. We had to represent British Columbia. It’s about growing up on Vancouver Island. There are lines about going swimming in the Fall and hanging around homeless people.

Morgan: These are our West Coast experiences: hobos, cold swimming in the Fall, and smoking other peoples’ weed.

THE FIRST LIVE SHOWS

So you are all from Vancouver Island, but you formed the band in Vancouver. So Amelia, do you have a strict policy to only play with island-people?

Amelia: It just happened. We hang out with island people too, but it wasn’t planned that way. None of us grew up together, we didn’t know each other on the island. My first band was The Repukes. We probably played like three shows. We played a show at the Alf-House it was a disaster, but it was a beautiful disaster. We couldn’t see anything because it was so dark in that basement. And I got really nervous, and I got…a bit too trashed? So it was a lesson learned at that show. We actually didn’t play any of our songs. Were were just basically hashing it out in front of everyone. It was really embarrassing.

You mean like learning the songs in real-time? In front of everyone?

Amelia: Exactly. {Laughs} But people have described that show to me as a beautiful disaster.

When did Yung Mums play their first show? When did the band start?

Amelia: Last September. What happened was we went down to Portland for the SMMR BMMR. And the three of us were anxious to get something started. We all had ants in our pants and we wanted to come back from Portland and get started on making songs together. Because I’d already written “Through With You.”

So all three of you guys went to SMMR BMMR in Summer 2010, and you wanted to have a band ready to play for following summer’s SMMR BMMR?

Morgan: We went down and hung out and partied and we said, “Next year we’re gonna play!” And we did.

I read somewhere, someone wrote that you guys couldn’t really play.

Julie: What?!

Amelia: Actually…that’s kind of true! It’s more about the essence that we give to people.

Julie: A good show for us is no stage, on the floor. Three hundred people. We played in Victoria in the back of this art gallery and the floor was just dirt. There was tons of people there. Those are my favourite shows, when people are kind of naughty, smoking. At the end I was covered in dust. And I got all this wet concrete all over my jacket. That makes for a good show.

STUDIO SICKNESS

You recorded with Felix at his Little Red studio right? Tell me about that.

Amelia: It was February, in the dead of winter. It was snowing out.

Julie: It almost killed us. We were all sick. It was like one day, sixteen or seventeen hours or something. We were all brutally sick. There was no heat n there and we were all sneezing. But spirits were high. We got a lot done and no one got pissed off or anything.

Amelia: I don’t think we had any food either.

Julie: It was Neo-Citron and a glass of cold water. Felix brought some buns that were kind of gross.

BLOOD AND BRUISES IN THE U.S.A.

You guys made it state-side this summer, did you not?

Morgan: Oh, yeah, we played some shows with Audacity. They came up here and we met them and then we went down with to Seattle and Tacoma. We weren’t even supposed to play in Seattle. Audacity just asked the promoters if we would play, so we got to play last at Pizza Fest.

Julie: And I’d been drinking as if I wasn’t going to play a show, because we weren’t supposed to be playing.

Morgan: Julie was totally gunned.

Amelia: The cool thing with that Pizza Fest show in Seattle was that it was cool to talk to my parents and say, “We played the Space Needle.”

{Laughs}

Julie: The house party in Tacoma was gnarly. Tacoma is gnarly. There were fights. And blood.

Morgan: We stayed in a Pokemon gym with Audacity. This Pokemon gym was just the biggest, most disgusting – it was just couches and nick-nacks and it smells like mould. But there was tons of room.

Julie: It was this punk warehouse place in Tacoma. Morgan got a really awesome bruise there.

Amelia: Yeah, so we’re walking around Tacoma by the Fred Meyer and Morgan has this huge bruise down her thigh and she’s wearing this really slutty skirt. We were all really hung over.

Yung Mums can next be seen playing at Eat A Dick Phil Specter on October 21s, a night of all-girl bands playing covers of Phil Specter-produced music.

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Zulu Records veteran and tunage aficionado Daniel Colussi is the Music Editor of Scout Magazine.