Local Austin-based band Orange Mothers never got much recognition outside of their home turf...but it's not because they didn't deserve it. This greatest hits collection features an overview of the band's career. The fourteen song collection showcases the band's oddball quirky pop music. The loose slightly goofy cuts on this album are not only funny...but they have strange staying power. Long after you've laughed at the lyrics, you may very well find yourself humming the band's tunes to yourself as you go about your daily routine. Orange Mothers were decidedly out-of-synch with other Austin bands of the 1990s...which may help to explain why they didn't receive as much recognition. This delightful disc includes "Heaven," "Love Birds," "Candy Clover," "Rudy," "Promised Land," and "Nancy."
- BabySue/LMNOP (January 2006)

Ethan Azarian must be an ancestor of Hans Christian Andersen, or perhaps a seventh cousin, twice removed, of Jacob & Wilheim Grimm. Azarian writes songs of the fantastic and surreal, twisted up with just the right amount of dysfunction. His Orange Mothers have become an Austin institution since their migration South from Vermont in the Eighties. Azarian's tunes of heaven and love, spaceships and jellyfish keep Austin weird all on their own. Orange Mothers' Greatest Hits is a book of fairy tales, each one specifically relegated to a particular place and time: youth, family outings, carnival rides. Sampling the Mothers' five LPs – from 1991's Money Store as the Hollywood Indians ("Young Girl") to 2002's delicate Traditional Love ("Roller Coaster Girl," "Promised Land") – Greatest Hits spins it storied pop. Opening with the seminal "Heaven," Azarian dashes through alien invasions and hand-holding straight through to what's possibly the definitive Mothers song yet: "Family Affair Pt. 1." Ethan Azarian, Jeff Johnston, Tim Audy, and James Welch are family. And it's about time the family tree pulled all the folklore and fantasy into one leather-bound, dust-ridden tome.
- Darcie Stevens, The Austin Chronicle (December 30, 2005)

Texas Platters: Plane Crash City Re-Release Review
Since so many songs from Plane Crash City have become integral to the Orange Mothers' live set, it's interesting to flash back to Austin, 1997, when Plane Crash City came out on cassette only. Sure enough, the Mothers' winsome blend of childlike whimsy and sad-hearted melancholia is in full bloom in songs of almost preternatural purity. Every aspect feels wholly natural, from Ethan Azarian's fragile melodies to James Welch's fantastical keyboard embellishments, whether the band is jubilantly heading for orbit on “Rocket Boy” or gazing despondently at the ground on “Burn the City.” On an album that embraces the chiming optimism of “Freight Train” and besotted drum-machine goof “Audy's Drunken Christmas,” such a high degree of clarity is remarkable indeed. Some of Azarian's most memorable creations materialize for the first time, including down-on-his-luck UFO abductee “Rudy” (where bassist Jeff Johnston introduces his now-familiar singing-through-a-telephone gambit), and the irrepressibly boy-crazy “Marshmello Girls.” Six years on, what resonates most of all are moments of pure sadness that slide in among the birthday parties and candy clovers -- subtle acknowledgements that life is never quite as simple as it sounds when you're singing about aliens and dancing with the queen of spades. Turns out the Orange Mothers had the Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin beat by at least three years.
- Christopher Gray, The Austin Chronicle (August 15, 2003)

Audiogalaxy Review by Will Sheff of Okkervil River
I'd like to start this review off with a quote: “It's a family affair! Come on! Come on! Come on! It's a family affair! It's a miracle! It's a miracle!”

Those are the lyrics to the Orange Mothers' spectacular “Family Affair Part II.,” in their entirety. Those four exclamation-point studded lines (I'm extrapolating the exclamation points. I've never seen the Orange Mothers' lyrics printed out, but I imagine them full of exclamation points - lead singer and songwriter Ethan Azarian certainly sounds like he's singing exclamation points.) are all the Orange Mothers need to build a masterpiece of naive pop. “Family Affair Part II” is an anthem that could have been commissioned to accompany a Chagall painting. It is a ballad that could have been sung by the angel Damiel in Wim Wenders' film “Wings of Desire,” a song that, while it specifies no particular event, captures perfectly a glowing sense of wonder and all-encompassing love. Like Half Japanese and Daniel Johnston, The Orange Mothers plunge, wide-eyed and unironic, into the rabbit hole of childhood memories and wake-and-bake daydreams and pull up pop gold, authentic, confidently amateurish music that is entirely devoid of rockstar posturing, show-offy guitar wankery, and hip snootiness. Azarian has the rare ability to toss out lyrics that make you chuckle while giving you a lump in your throat: “Ice cream and cocaine, how sweet this world can be...I wish I was a big giraffe, chewing up all the leaves,” from “Heaven,” for instance. Though Orange Mothers songs often deal with themes of childhood, the group's warped psychedelia and references to cross-dressing dads, attempted suicide, chronically disintegrating relationships and selling drugs on the fairgrounds demonstrate that Azarian isn't just constructing Hallmark card portayals of childhood or turning his face away from grim realities. In Orange Mothers land, as in the real world, suffering and turmoil coexist with a sense of incandescent wonder and redemption.

“In Orange Mothers land, as in the real world, suffering and turmoil coexist with a sense of incandescent wonder and redemption.”

“(Songwriter) Ethan Azarian has the rare ability to toss out lyrics that make you chuckle while giving you a lump in your throat.”

In their adopted home of Austin, TX, “the live music capital of the world,” the Orange Mothers' loyal fans include an army of scenesters whose love for them recently manifested itself in a packed concert featuring some the town's best bands exclusively playing Orange Mothers songs. They belted out Azarian's wistful, skewed lyrics to the background of punk skronkery, country strumming, casiotone sloppiness, and circusy soul. Concerts at which the Orange Mothers themselves perform the songs almost seem like rehearsals with an audience, with Azarian bullshitting with the band, re-arranging the songs onstage, and making wild lyric substitutions. The band will stop mid-bridge and Azarian will admonish bass player Jeff Johnston to make the bassline, “more like a cookie,” then stop him again and specify, “No, like an oatmeal cookie.” During the crusty-old-man anthem “Kids (Don't Know),” Azarian will shout to the audience “No kids singing! I don't want anyone under thirty singing along!” Most bands would be thrilled that anyone would even want to sing along. It's this weird sense that they're just playing for themselves that is a key to what's so endearing about the Orange Mothers; there's no attempt to garner critical accolades or make fists pump or attract eager A&R guys. There's just Azarian singing his songs, like a kid making a fort out of the season's first snow and forgetting about anything else except how cool it's going to be to invite his friends inside. Download these songs and you're invited.
- Will Sheff, Audiogalaxy (January 30, 2003)

Texas Platters: Traditional Love
In 10-plus years of existence, the Orange Mothers have evolved from a ragtag band of psychedelic nomads into a somewhat remarkable organic pop troupe. Traditional Love, the Austin quartet's fourth outing, furthers the promise of 2000's Big Blue House with simple lyrics that achieve universality through subtle ambiguity and warm instrumentation that rings out like an invitation to fellowship. Guitarist/songwriter/vocalist Ethan Azarian might not have the pipes to pull off an overwrought Diane Warren epic, but the placid, everyman quality of his vocal on the title track elucidates the serenity of contented love in a manner that's at once magical and down to earth. Similarly, the richly connective piano tapestry provided by James Welch elevates the Mother's pop-based musical approach to a higher plane. Perhaps the flip side of “Traditional Love” is “Rollercoaster Girl,” a lament about falling in and out of love with an unbearably cool scenester in a town too small for two broken hearts. Then you have songs like “Lullaby” and “Heartache” that revel in a sweet, childlike innocence, acting as effervescent elixirs for when you get dealt cards of loneliness and sorrow. Though it requires some degree of faithful contrivance for an adult to maintain such a world-view, there's nothing less than honest in the Orange Mothers' paeans to small wonders.
- Greg Beets, The Austin Chronicle (May 4, 2002)

A Postmodern Fear of Significance: Songs in the Key of Ethan:
The key to the Orange Mothers is the songs, and nobody can explain them like they can. Thus, the Chronicle thought it would be a good idea to sit them down and go over selected works from Plane Crash City and Big Blue House to discover just what they hell they were thinking. Our interviewer and three-fourths of the Mothers met one Saturday afternoon at the Texas Showdown to get to the bottom of things. Bassist “Stinkpot” Johnston couldn't make it because, well, he forgot. Musicians. [1000 word interview follows...READ IT HERE]
- Christopher Gray, The Austin Chronicle (June 30, 2000)

I Am the Jellyfish That Walks Upon the Land: The Orange Mothersʼ Fantasia (Austin Chronicle Cover Story)
This is a family affair, everyone's invited. Rudy plays guitar (“Power Chords and Mustard” is the only song he knows.). Upstairs, daddy is trying on mama's clothes. Marshmallow girls dance with aliens. Big brother, the dope-smoking moron, is asleep in the yard. Ethan searches for his soul. Candy Clover is sitting on the clouds -- and if you look into her eyes, you just might disappear. Stinkpot is singing through a telephone. The penguins are asleep in their beds. Audy stumbles drunkenly through various Christmas carols. Never slow down.Later on, Jim Thunder is driving us all to the fair, except Rocketboy, whoʼs giving Nancy a ride in his spaceship. The Italian girls come by rowboat. My little sister is in the stock-car race. Me and my friends, we're going to the hoochie coochie show. I'm buying drugs on the midway and trippin' out on the ferris wheel. James E. Waymsy is trippin' out on the calliope. I am the jellyfish who walks upon the land. We'll be ready for bed when we get back to the big blue house. Look -- somebody didn't do their damn dishes! Time to pack it in. All these people are real, these lovebirds and polar bears riding the freight train. They come to life whenever four shaggy thirtysomethings unpack their equipment behind Hole in the Wall, Continental Club, Cactus Cafe, Emo's, or the Red Eyed Fly. Once upon a time, they used to sleep in the Electric Lounge before it was even called that. Sometimes they sing 'cause they're depressed. Sometimes they sing 'cause they're out to lunch. Sometimes they sing 'cause they're happy, so happy. Usually, more musicians are at their shows than in line at the free clinic. Their driver's licenses call them Ethan Azarian, Jeff Johnston, Tim Audy, and James Welch. Those who love them call them the Orange Mothers. In May, the Mothers played to a sold-out crowd at Antone's... READ MORE

... Indeed. Testimonials for the Orange Mothers are plentiful in Austin's musical wonderland. “[Ethan] has managed to set up his life so there's no divisions between work and art,” says Do It Now! Foundation's Tom Cuddy, ex-Hollywood Indian and friend of Azarian's since the New England days. “It's like he's gotten it all one thing, unified.” “There's something very pure about the Orange Mothers,” says Jacob Schulze, guitarist for Dumptruck, the Dismukes, and the American People. “There's no bullshit, there's no posturing, know what I mean?” “They are the most bro type guys,” says Fastball's Tony Scalzo. “You know how you hook up with some band and it's like, ʻHey, this is not the kind of people we want to hang out with'? With these guys, it doesn't matter who you are, you're gonna be able to get along with them.” “The Orange Mothers make me want to drink beer and smoke pot, so I'm glad I only get to see them a couple of times a week,” says Superego's Paul Minor. “I don't ever want to think that I can't go to an Orange Mothers show,” Schulze says. “I don't ever want to live in Austin where there's no Orange Mothers at least like once a month.”
- Christopher Gray, The Austin Chronicle (June 30, 2000)

Ethan Azarian and company may have been nothing more than flies in the ointment of the still-great (some say) Austin Music Scene when they arrived in town from Vermont around the turn of the decade, but they were big flies. And like many flies before them, they loved stirring up shit.

As the Hollywood Indians, a term Ernest Hemingway was occasionally heard to utter, the band entered a sea of better-known local acts and found themselves quickly foundering and seeking a way to gain the attention of those on the shore. Azarian went for the cheap and easy route, one that perhaps only the Dicks had previously managed to exploit as well as he soon would. His fresh new angle was insulting local personalities and institutions via the streets of Austin.
READ MORE
-Ken Lieck, The Austin Chronicle (June 30, 2000)

Texas Platters: Plane Crash City
Caught Scream on video the other night, a movie that makes clear it's fucking with you right as it's doing it (“This is usually the part where the presumed-dead killer comes back to life for one final scare,” then Bam! Up he pops right on cue). Great movie, great concept: entertainment and simultaneous self-mocking social commentary! (How Nineties.) Austin pop adopted this philosophy early on; hell, thanks to Slacker, Austin coined the genre. As interpreted on Plane Crash City, the new tape by left-field, left-of-the-dial local outfit the Orange Mothers, it spells 15 songs' worth of post-ironic cultural fun. Is “Rocket Boy” a clip Man... or Astroman? hasn't quite worked up to yet, or a cleverly veiled snap at 25-year-olds who still play astronaut? “Freight Train” could be a stone-perfect Brakeman tribute or just a song about needing a late ride home from the Electric Lounge. “Burn the City” pairs incendiary Atari Teenage Riot lyrics with a narcoleptic American Analog Set vibe while “Birthday” and “Alien” ape Wayne Coyne's daffy starchild melodies while placing his Flaming Lips firmly on the Mothers' ass. The finale, “Andy's Drunken Christmas,” is such synth-kitsch even the Prima Donnas would blush. Is Plane Crash City pop? Parody? Both, of course. Welcome to the Nineties.
- Christopher Gray, The Austin Chronicle (July 14, 1997)

updated 1/27/06