no. 15 — Cool & Pretty by Mothpuppy
By: Jenna Sylvester
Tags: Baltimore, Indie Music, Personal Essay, Album Review, Music

I literally cannot believe how lucky I am to know Mothpuppy. Morgan, the front-person and main brain blast of the band, was one of the friends I bonded with over Green Day in the very beginning of my time at school. Though we initially started hanging out because of Green Day, our friendship evolved past just Dookie and Kerplunk. We had a fiction writing class together in which the Professor (rightly) praised everything Morgan wrote, and later we lived together. Sharing a home with their cat Buster was a dream come true.

Mothpuppy played the very first show I went to in Baltimore. They played in a cramped basement, blue LED’s providing the only lighting in an otherwise pitch-black room. I remember how animated the crowd was when Mothpuppy started playing. One of the friends I went to the show with told me that Morgan was the best songwriter they’d ever met. If you listen to tracks like “Flea”, the humanizing ballad of a flea that lived and died on Buster, you’d know that my friend’s statement was true. Morgan’s voice is deep and resonant. Singing along with their songs feels like you’re bottoming out, pulling all the air from your lungs and diaphragm. You’re left breathless and elated.

For maybe a year, I could brag that I had seen every single full band performance of Mothpuppy’s. This was true until they went on tour, or until they played during a summer I wasn’t in the area. I don’t remember which came first. Despite offering nothing but occasional sips from my water bottle from the front row, they let me tag along to their shows. I would watch them make tapes, sell merch, plan shows, and write new songs. I went to their practices, mostly because they were my friends and I was lonely, but also because I couldn’t get enough of hearing their songs. Cool & Pretty is still on constant rotation all these years later. I got my mom obsessed with their music too, to the point where she started begging them to play a full band show in Massachusetts so she could go.

A lot of people who know and love Mothpuppy think “Joan” is the gut-punch of a song. Morgan has said that they don’t understand why that’s their most popular track, but I think it’s understandable. Morgan’s voice shines in it. The whole song feels like an ode to longing, a snapshot of time that mirrors an a24 masterpiece. I’ve watched Morgan play that song in basements, festival stages, and pizza parlors. More often than not I am moved to tears by it. Sometimes I get angry when I hear it, because it feels useless to believe I could ever create something as beautiful as that song. Usually, I cry because I feel lucky to know the person who wrote it into being.

I love seeing Morgan play in any form. When they dressed up as Billie Joe Armstrong one Halloween and covered Jesus of Suburbia in full, I lost my mind. For several months I begged Morgan to send me a cover of Lana Del Rey’s “Happiness Is A Butterfly” because they posted a snippet of it on their Instagram story, and I stand by my opinion that Morgan’s version is better than the original. Mothpuppy is a true gem of a band, and I highly suggest you buy their music.