The Return Of I Mother Earth Showers Fans With Love, Riffs

You have to feel bad for any band that slowly and helplessly falls into obscurity, especially a band as musically gifted as I Mother Earth.  After all, this is a band whose first two albums (1993's Dig and 1996's Scenery and Fish) not only kicked ass back in the day, but completely hold up nearly twenty years after the fact.  However, when you're on a roll, sometimes egos come into play.  Once Edwin defected to flirt with mainstream acceptance in the late 90's, taking much of the fairweather IME fans with him, the band's hand had pretty much been dealt.  Their decidedly difficult, meandering and considerably mellower debut with new singer Brian Byrne, 1999's Blue Green Orange, didn't exactly do them any favours.  Tragically, their last album (2003's The Quicksilver Meat Dream) was simultaneously their most musically satisfying and most commercially disappointing release.

As is so often the case, interest waned, the money started drying up, and I Mother Earth decided to take a break.  That break lasted over eight years before it was finally announced in January that new music was being written and new shows were being planned.  The first taste of what to expect from I Mother Earth circa 2012 surfaced online March 21 in the form of new song We Got the Love, which you should take six minutes out of your day for the sake of the awesome:




It's a refreshing and energetic track, throwing back to the band's classic sound while refusing to simply rehash it; it's a testament to Byrne's acceptance that you can listen to a track that musically could have sat alongside Edwin tunes on Scenery and Fish and not actually miss Edwin on it.

Perhaps more awesome than the song itself is the attitude of the band.  Having resigned to the fact that making a living at music is probably no longer an option, it's been announced via Jag Tanna's IME blog that any proceeds from the sale of We Got the Love will simply go toward the recording of the next song.  This is genius in a way; rather than sinking thousands of dollars into recording an album that in this day and age likely won't sell, they've instead made the promise to keep songs coming as long as their fans support the cause.  It's a simple concept that you almost can't believe hasn't been done on a wider scale.

If you support the band and want to hear more, you can download We Got the Love here.