Over the last 15 years or so, British Columbia indie rockers Mother Mother have kept a pretty steady ship, but it wasn’t until 2020 that the band caught fire, when a whole new generation of fans discovered their catalog via TikTok. On Inside, their eighth LP, you can feel them adding fuel to that spark. A self-described “pandemic album,” Inside bristles with pent-up cabin-fever energy and a yearning for release, coming in swinging for the fences on the vein-popping rallying cries “Two” and “Sick of the Silence.” But whenever those in-the-red histrionics threaten to get overwhelming, singer-songwriter Ryan Guldemond dials it back for moments of intimate and contemplative sweetness, such as “Forgotten Souls” and the singsong “Pure Love,” rendered even sweeter by the genderless blurring of his theatrical vocals with those of sister Molly Guldemond and keyboardist Jasmin Parkin. They maintain that balance for the record's duration. The genre-agnostic quirks and penchant for melodrama that have always set Mother Mother apart haven’t been ironed out here, just streamlined into something that appears poised to connect with the masses at a moment when popular tastes have grown diverse enough to catch up with what they've been doing all along. Inside sounds very much like the hit record that nobody—least of all Mother Mother themselves—ever expected them to make. (This deluxe version includes seven bonus tracks.)