Local Review: Ritt Momney – BASE

Ritt Momney
BASE
Self-Released
Street: 02.27.2026
Ritt Momney =  The Slaps + Tim Hecker / Anti-Mormon Messiah

Is there a more Utah artist than Ritt Momney? That being said, where the hell has he been? The short answer is off on an adventure, as well as around. It is no mystery that Jack Rutter might not want to live here forever, and yet it may be the exact spot that he is called to. After going viral in 2020 for his cover of Corinne Bailey Rae‘s “Put Your Records On,” Rutter got signed to Columbia and moved to Los Angeles and New York City. He ended up being featured in Rolling Stone and reached over 650 million streams on Spotify. After five years of radio silence since his last album, Sunny Boy, Rutter is back with his talkbox and anti-holy sentiments. The artist is renowned for poignantly describing the ache that accompanies being a human being and member of the LDS church. The album Base brings everything back home in an entirely new light, a testament to how returning to where you came from may be exactly what you need — even if it’s for an entirely different reason than why you were created there. 

I grew up Mormon, so Ritt Momney has a very special place in my heart. I remember listening to “If The Book Doesn’t Sell” with my best friends here in Utah who all grew up in the church and bursting into tears. It still makes me cry. So imagine my surprise when one of my favorite local artists dropped something new seemingly out of the blue. The ex-mo movement kind of makes me cringe, but I wouldn’t call Rutter that because that’s not the entirety of his work, although it may be shaped by the experience of growing up in the church in general. Sure his name is a play on words for the Mormon politician Mitt Romney. His original band made “Young Adult” and consisted of friends who moved away to go on missions, leading him to become a solo project. But with songs like “Escalator” and “Headstart,” Rutter has more than proven himself to be a standalone talented songwriter and producer, who plays with lyrics and sound like no other. Who can blame a guy for going ghost, especially when so much of his music consists of commentary on the in-between of life and death?

BASE is about being home, the title itself referring to this notion as in “home base.” The album cover is an amalgamated and fuzzy rendition of blueprints, presumably of Rutter’s Salt Lake home. The starting track, “BASE,” feels like you shrunk yourself down and set up a home in a speaker; you can feel every reverb within the four walls indented by the diaphragm and cone. The lyrics walk you through the garden of Rutter’s mind, as he shows you each reason as to why he made this album. “I’DDO” feels magical and dark all at once, like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Each aspect of the aural experience reflects back to each other, finding each other through echolocation. Our brains are programmed with neurons in the premotor cortex so we can find each other’s lips when kissing in the dark. That’s what this song reminds me of. 

A home is not so different from your physical form — in fact, one might say they are the same. We are all physical manifestations of something spiritually intangible, just making up the rest as we go along. The lyrics toward the end of “BODY” say, “I change where I’m hiding / I’m not hard to find,” and show how we’re all just playing hide and seek with ourselves. One of the most heartbreaking songs is “GUNNA” which, contrary to popular belief, is not about open carrying. Instead, I’ll let you find out for yourself but just be warned: you may be left empty and sobbing on the ground. As for how it sounds, imagine a romcom where the guy never gets the girl. “DOG” and “CAT” go hand in hand. I do love how they are direct references to the overall theme (home is where your pets are afterall). Finally, we have “THE TANK” which has the lyrics, “Blow it up for Cooper / Go again  / We’re trying for AJ.” If you’re wondering what this is referring to, it’s team members of the Utah Jazz. The song is about purposefully throwing a game in order to see what else you can get. Again, it doesn’t get more Utah than this. —Marzia Thomas

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