Album Review: Mere Women - 'Your Town'

Occasionally, a band will come by that produces a style of music so unique that they’re nearly impossible to place in any conceivable box whatsoever. Mere Women are a Sydney trio that do exactly this. The group's exciting blend of goth-pop and post-punk comes together in a wonderful marriage of sound that sets them apart as one of Australia’s most forward thinking bands.

The delay-fueled guitar parts and consistent drum pattern of ‘Home’ melds together with vocalist/keyboardist Amy Wilson’s other-worldly vocals and key sounds to create an airy and ethereal soundscape, and while the album’s second and title track ‘Your Town’ could leave fans worried that this will be an album of tracks that all sound the same, ‘Our Street’ quickly does away with any fears, with a driving guitar part and shifting tempos and drum beats keeping listeners on their toes.

‘Your Town’ isn’t an album that wastes time worrying about producing ‘cool’ sounding parts on an individual level, but rather worries about creating parts that come together to create something bigger than themselves. For example, ‘Hands & Faces’ may seem like a collection of relatively simple parts, but when the driving guitars meet the subtle (but ever so important) addition of the synth line, it reveals a much bigger picture. Likewise, the catchy vocal refrain of ‘Where does your mind go?’ and Flyn Mckinnirey’s intricate guitar part may seem strong in the context that they’re in, but they’re made much, much stronger by Katrina Byrne’s repetetive yet vital rim-click pattern.

While the band does show a great deal of strength in producing the airy and ethereal sounds that dominate most of the record, they aren’t so rigid so as not to step outside of that. Case in point is ‘Midlight’ a track toward the end of the album that starts off fast and loud, with the trio creating a wall of noise at points that makes the track stand out.

There is a common thread tying all of the tracks on ‘Your Town’ together. While the band does explore some different soundscapes throughout the record, it’s clear that they all come from the same unique, other-worldly roots. Exciting, forward thinking, and different from the rest of the crowd, Mere Women are onto something good with the sounds they produce on ‘Your Town.’

1. Home
2. Your Town
3. Our Street
4. Hands and Face
5. Golden
6. Know U Well
7. Heave Ho
8. Midlight
9. Astray
10. Moon Creeper