In a quite perfect-timing move, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros have released a video for their song ‘Mother’, last Sunday, just in time for Mother’s day.
It is the band’s contribution to the released-via-Starbucks charity album ‘Every Mother Counts’, an organization dedicated to increase education and support for maternal mortality reduction around the world.
The song is a slow ballad giving a large part to Alex Ebert’s high-pitched voice and not too much emphasis on the music just played by flutes, quiet guitars and gentle drumming. It’s nothing like the happy carnival of feet-stomping-hand-clapping and drenched-in-the-60s-70s catchy hooks we are used to with this joyous band, but the intention was obviously different and more personal.
The lyrics are from a poem that Ebert wrote for his mother as he explained to Spinner:
‘I wanted to explain to her that taking her for granted for so much of my life was less a function of my admitted selfishness and more a function of her unwavering love for me. Her unflinching steadiness I took to be immovable fact — I took her for ‘granite,’ as the poem goes, to make my stand upon. A simple piece of music, more a landscape for the poem to live in, would do. And keeping the poem entirely intact, without addition or subtraction, without chorus or bridge, would only do. And so I wrote and demo'd the song 'Mother,' and then nearly forgot about it (perhaps taking even the song for granted) until Christy asked us if we would contribute a song to Every Mother Counts. As it stands it is one of my favorite pieces of ours, and I am very grateful that it has found a place to live and give in this album.’
And the video is also very simple, made of what it seems to be homemade footage of all the band members talking with their moms in a large open field.
Meanwhile, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros are expecting to drop their next album called ‘Here’ on May 29.