Toronto based alternative artist Mouth Breather coalesces anxiety into beautiful odd pop songs like "Modern Girl"

Photo: Brian Van Wyk

Toronto based alternative pop artist 23 year old Owen Hooper AKA Mouth Breather worries about the world at large and the world online too. His concerns and sideways looks coalesce into askew pop songs that have a deep emotional gravitas. His recently released track Modern Girl tugs at your heart and teases your brain with poetic twists and turns. Besides Hooper's innate talent in conceiving melodies that can feel ear wormy while heartbreaking, his vocal aesthetic is that of a young man with wisdom past his years and I love his lyrics. Add the odd sensation of listening to it cast against old banned Soviet animation (and nostalgic shots of San Francisco) and the song feels even odder and sadder. 

I guess I sometimes like to feel sad and in some ways it helps me see the beauty of life (as ultimately sad as it is) and I only wish this song were longer so I could revel in it's beautiful / sad aesthetic even longer. 

- Robb Donker



THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

Mouth Breather is the moniker of 23 yr-old Toronto based eclectic/alt-pop artist Owen Hooper. He's on the internet all the time and totally up to date with culture i.e. which Soundcloud rapper just got a face tattoo. He also suffers from a sense of alienation and anxiety about what life is like, given how much of the world is taking place online. As a result, his songs are all believable and they tell stories, although they're not at all what you would expect from regular "pop" music. There's something sort of "uncanny valley" about his music, because Mouth Breather isn't really sure what is real and what is fabricated reality.

Here's a quote from Mouth Breather on the creation of his new video for "Modern Girl":

“The video is a supercut of footage from an old banned soviet animation which I dug up while pouring through soviet art archives (so much really cool stuff that the west never really had the chance to experience) and some vintage scenes of San Francisco.  Thematically these two worlds collide perfectly into the subject matter of the song.  Modern Girl is about a guy reflecting on his first love, back in the city where he grew up, in a country ruled by a pseudo-authoritarian police state not far from the governments we are increasingly getting to know as partisan alienation runs rampant and technology begins peeling away our fundamental human privacies. Politics aside, the man remembers the good times he had with his high school romance with the blinders of reminiscence muting the background of civil unrest and absolute authority.  In lines like 'There's a place down by government and view/ we can stay out after curfew,' we see the young lovers carelessly running through the streets juxtaposed with one of a few subtle nods to the larger issues that will eventually destroy his home and take the life of the girl he thought he would grow old with."