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You are here: Home / Features / Girl, You Need More: Mozart’s Sister Offers Up a Diverse Pop Platter on Being

Girl, You Need More: Mozart’s Sister Offers Up a Diverse Pop Platter on Being

August 7, 2014 By Nick Hanover Leave a Comment

Mozart's Sister Being

Over here in Austin, there’s an overabundance of shitty bro bands trying to market themselves as “real” music, which usually means lots of power chords, solos, facial hair and maybe an acoustic guitar or two. It’s nothing new for guitar fascists to argue that electronics aren’t true “instruments,” authenticity warfare has been waged since culture has existed but it never stops being depressing, particularly when you consider that an increasing amount of the most soulful music these days is created in bedrooms with an array of laptops and controllers rather than in a major label studio where every “real” instrument gets its own isolation booth. Canadian soon-to-be-superstar Caila Thompson-Hannant, who records as Mozart’s Sister, puts this aspect of her creation process in the bio in the online liner notes for new album Being, stating that she “produced, recorded and wrote the album using a cheap sound card and Ableton software, approaching it with a do-it-all-by-my-fucking-self ideology.” There’s real sweat, blood and tears in these ones and zeroes, a clear zest for creation that doesn’t need to play up its organic nature in order to publicize its authenticity.

Like her fellow Canadian Grimes, Hannant uses her bedroom production to create an intriguing sonic world throughout Being, but where Grimes tends to get vocally lost in that world, flitting in and out of focus like an audio pixie, Mozart’s Sister is a project that unabashedly puts its big pop vocals front and center. Hannant has a strong, vivid voice that makes even her most Grimes-y tracks, like “Lone Wolf,” stand out as decidedly different; there may be bubbly synths and a fluttering electro beat, but your ears are pulled to those powerful pipes more than any other element. Hannant’s bio posits “Post-era Bjork” as one of her chief influences and that makes perfect sense; she has an impressive handle on dynamics and like Bjork she uses the airy roominess of her recordings to maximize the beauty of her tone, particularly on more down tempo numbers like “A Move.” But the other chief vocal influence she lists is funk freak Betty Davis, which shows itself less in a trademark sexed up Betty Davis scream than in a gonzo approach to combining influences.

The best of the freaky pop hybrids Mozart’s Sister offers up is “Bow a Kiss,” a track that starts with a straightforward classic hip-hop beat before the synths and a vocal riff on Duran Duran’s “Notorious” pop up. By the time Hannant steps up to center stage, “Bow a Kiss” has morphed into a ’90s R&B track, complete with sultry explanations of the games boys play, but then it twists again as Hannant shifts her melody to match a spy guitar lick that appears out of nowhere. Here Hannant dives into the higher register of her voice, bringing the airy quality of her Bjork-influenced tracks back until the song arrives at its devastating big pop chorus and she embraces the earthy lower tones again. “Bow a Kiss” is the sound of a woman who has grown up in a never ending cross cultural pop buffet, who owns the entire catalogs of Kate Bush and Destiny’s Child and refuses to separate the two.

Point being, Mozart’s Kiss is authentically something new and personal, carved out of a clear love for music rather than a clear hatred of others’ experimentation. Even when Hannant is playing around with more obvious R&B melodies, it’s something like “My House is Wild,” a track that filters the R&B through a dial tone sample, an electro-pop beat and a house music climax. You never get the feeling that Hannant is making music based off a list of things she wants to emulate or avoid, instead her musical DNA can’t help but assert itself organically through the music, which in turn makes it more authentic than any white boy “roots rock” could ever hope to be, keyboards be damned.

That’s not to say that Mozart’s Sister can’t do straightforward pop, though. The album actually closes out with “Chained Together,” a decidedly ’80s inflected bit of synth-pop with one of Hannant’s smoothest melodies. Parts of the song have a Tegan & Sara feel, especially when Hannant starts to back up her own vocals, but its minimalist structure and production hearken back to the peak era of Mute Records. Earlier on the album, Mozart’s Sister even offers up a glimpse of the project as The-Blow-Goes-House with “Enjoy,” which juxtaposes its bedroom confessional vocal with a clubby beat an embrace of Hannant’s inner diva on its chorus and breakdown. Hannant may be a basically unknown Canadian indie act right now, but all this range and flexibility make it pretty clear that she has a lot of breakout potential, like an optimistic, feminine pop counterpart to fellow Canadian The Weeknd. At the very least, I’m sure she’ll be able to update that cheap sound card pretty soon.


Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Loser City as well as Ovrld, where he contributes music reviews and writes a column on undiscovered Austin bands.  You can also flip through his archives at  Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with friends on twitter: @Nick_Hanover 

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Filed Under: Features, Reviews Tagged With: Indie, Mozart's Sister, Music

About Nick Hanover

Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Loser City as well as Ovrld, where he contributes music reviews and writes a column on undiscovered Austin bands. You can also flip through his archives at Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with Dylan Garsee on twitter: @Nick_Hanover

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