Songwriter and lead singer Steph Knipe, drummer Liv Battell and bass player Bruce Hamilton will make their first appearance in Bloomington 8 p.m. today at The Void, located at 1607 S. Rogers St. They will be joined by Jawbreaker Reunion, another New York-based pop group.
Music functions as a coping mechanism for them, said Knipe, who uses they/them pronouns. Most of their writing draws from personal experience, and for the past four years that has consisted of breakups.
“I would hope that what would draw people to the show would be to have a good happy-cry-dance experience,” Knipe said. “It’s happy fun time, but if you want to get into it, you can be emotional.”
The members of Adult Mom met at the State University of New York at Purchase, where they all attended college. The name “Adult Mom” stemmed from being in college and trying to understand what it meant to be an independent adult, Knipe said.
“Someone made a joke to me where they said, ‘You’re kind of an adult but you’re not really an adult,’” Knipe said. “I was trying to play off of that, and the mom part came in because it sounded like something that goes together, but not always.”
Jawbreaker Reunion, like Adult Mom, was formed when the members met in college in upstate New York and decided to act on their impulse to make music.
Lily Mastrodimos on guitar, Bella Mazzetti on bass and Dre Szegedy-Maszak on drums all share the vocals.
“Bella and I had discussed starting a band at the end of our freshman year, so when sophomore year came about, we met Dre and started writing and playing songs together,” Mastrodimos said.
Their first songs were a mix of twee and punk, Mastrodimos said, but after their first album, “Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club” from 2014, they started experimenting with heavier sounds and more musically complex songs.
“We want people to just be excited to have a good time,” Mastrodimos said. “We always have fun when we play, and we want people to have as much fun and feel as good as we do.”
