There was never a perfect opportunity for Mother Mother lead vocalist Ryan Guldemond to release the solo music he had been sitting on since 2018. The band was and still is active, having just finished a European and North American tour, but there came a point when he knew he just had to release it.

Under the moniker GLDMTH (pronounced “gold-mouth”), Guldemond used a play on his last name to drop a self-titled, self-produced, 11-track album.

“I like what it connotes, GLDMTH,” he said. “So much of my life, my career, is based around the words I summon and choose to put out there.”

Despite having sat on these songs for a few years, Guldemond had no problem still connecting to them. He believes that a good song is eternally a good song, and while these 11 songs do not have an overtly thematic message, he intended for all of them to evoke feelings of wonderment and nostalgia.

“Quite often some of the early stuff is the best because that’s when you are falling in love with the craft,” he said. “There’s a real romance there, and there’s a certain naivety there too that I think births great music because you don’t know what you’re not supposed to do yet.”

GLDMTH is a deeply emotional experience from start to finish. Guldemond thinks that when people experience another person’s extreme vulnerability, it makes them feel vulnerable as well. That is what he intended with this album; to make listeners feel.

An example of that extreme vulnerability is “The Symphony”, which Guldemond said was one of the most rewarding and challenging songs to create.

“It is a fairly sad, personal song,” he said. “Even just the music itself, I think that’s the most tortured chord progression I’ve ever written. Working on it as long and tirelessly as I did always brought me back to that space; I would leave those sessions feeling pretty dark. But I can’t say I dislike that feeling. I quite enjoy being swept away in whatever strong emotion the music is conjuring, good or bad; it makes you feel alive.”

In addition to the music, GLDMTH is a melting pot of Guldemond’s favorite mediums. He wanted GLDMTH to be a space where music, photography, videography and poetry could coexist and compliment one another.

“It’s truly an art project that doesn’t have any physical deadline,” he said. “It’s just born from the wins of me and what I feel like doing on that given day.”

That given day can be as simple as taking a photo of nature while on a daily walk. It is a quietude that Guldemond adopted during the last two years, when he found himself refining his ability to listen deeply. He considers his music a “celebration for the miracle that is daily living and seeing framed mundanity in a profound lens.”

“When things are so hard, it’s almost like you’re more sensitive to beauty because you’re yearning for it more,” he continued. “I find in something like a pandemic, a flower never looks so beautiful because you need that beauty as something of an antidote to all the grimness around you.”

With a new piece of his soul laid out, Ryan Guldemond has given listeners an opportunity to find the vulnerability in themselves and appreciate all emotions. GLDMTH is about embracing art in any form, trying something new and not being afraid of failure or imperfection.