Track by Track: Mere Women

Sydney trio Mere Women reflect on their hometowns and coveting other people’s lives on second album ‘Your Town’, writes vocalist/keyboardist AMY WILSON.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘Home’

Flyn [Mckinnirey] wrote the guitar riff for this after listening to a lot of the last Twin Shadow album. He was inspired by that ’80s pop guitar. People have said that ‘Home’ has an ’80s flamenco vibe. Not the original intention but we liked it nonetheless. The track is kinda about not really having a family home to go back to. Just the bricks and mortar, that is. I’m not even sure that bricks and mortar are important but they were nice and comforting. Sometimes I circle past the house I grew up in and get really mad that the idiots who live there now have painted it a hideous colour and pulled out all of the beautiful natives my dad planted.

‘Your Town’

Mere Women all came from the burbs. Kat [drummer Katrina Byrne] from the western suburbs of Sydney and Flyn and I from Thirroul (South Coast NSW). Thirroul, and the surrounding suburbs, are incredibly beautiful but it’s a small world down there and it can seem a bit insular at times. I was always stinging to get the hell out of there as a teenager because I felt like a bit of an oddball, but I still call it home. I feel a strong affinity with the beaches, the bush and some of the people I know there. I was always afraid of getting ‘stuck’ down there but now that I think back on it I’m probably just as ‘stuck’ in Sydney.

This song is directly linked to the album artwork, which is a reimagining of the towns that we grew up in.

‘Our Street’

This is the most well-rounded tune on the record. We go from punk (‘Know U Well’) to pop (‘Hands and Face’) and this one sits perfectly in-between. Initially ‘Our Street’ was a punk song with a super fast beat – we slowed it right down and added in some pretty keys. This gave the song more room, more space for the vocal melody to evolve in to what it became. The video clip for the track was shot in Thirroul. We went back to all of the places we used to hang. They were mostly overgrown so we had to find new places to film. This is my fav track.

‘Hands and Face’

I wrote the bones of this song at the place we jam at in Marrickville after walking down to that end of town with my dog Barney to get a sausage roll from Bourke Street. I was feeling pretty greasy after that and thought I’d sing it off. Seeing as though the rehearsal space was right there, Barney and I went in and spent the whole afternoon wailing and playing. It was a mess of a song that had no beginning or end to speak of, but had a good feel to it. Flyn and Kat reined it in and gave it structure.

‘Golden’

The other day my friend told me that once you’ve turned 26, your body stops healing itself as well as it used to. Your body starts to die nearly as soon as it has finished growing, it seems, and that is just life. I’m OK with that, but what really scares me is losing my memory. I am terrible at documenting things and almost never take photographs so I am sure that if I do lose my memory one day, it will be like being lost at sea. I worry that the people I love will forget me too.

‘Know U Well’

This one took forever to write. We held on to it because Flyn loved the riff. We chopped and changed it heaps, which was rare because normally we would just toss it when it got a bit difficult. It’s about when you think something bad’s about to happen. You’re not sure what might happen but you just feel uneasy. I have this feeling a lot when summer starts: everything feels so different and heavy. Sticky. A year is coming to a close and possibly it’s time to re-evaluate your entire life. Maybe it’s just the stress of another awkward family Christmas around the corner...

‘Heave Ho’

‘Heave Ho’ is Kat’s favourite track on the album. It’s about having something good in your life but resenting it. You could just throw everything away and start fresh if you had the balls to do it – but you probably don’t and it would probably be a mistake if you did ... but you’ll never know. I think of this one as the ‘Kate Bush song’ because of the wailing, high-pitched chorus. This chorus is my favourite thing to sing from the album. I feel like I should be dancing on a big grassy hill and flinging my arms about when I sing it. Fortunately, I am chained to my keys so nobody need witness that.

‘Midlight’

Arielle Gamble, the artist who did the cover for Your Town, is my cousin. She grew up for a while in a mud brick hut in the middle of the bush with no running water or electricity. I went out there one time as a kid and I’ve never forgotten how dark it was once the candles burnt through in the evening. I remember staring at her face in front of mine and it swirled all around and changed into other faces – other people, monsters, all sorts of animal shapes. In the pitch-black dark of the country, your imagination goes wild. I still think about this today when I look at the face of somebody I know very well in a new way, see them in half-light or notice something I have never noticed about them before. I find it unsettling and wonder if they are hiding something. This is what I was pondering when I wrote the lyrics to ‘Midlight’.

This one is Flyn’s fave to play.

‘Astray’

‘Astray’ was the first track we wrote after Old Life. We thought that it had a cinematic quality to it and I think the way that we recorded this album really did it justice. The studio was set up inside a wine cold-storage warehouse in Orange, NSW. It was frigging freezing in there even in the middle of summer! The guitar had an entire warehouse to itself and our sound engineer Tim Carr managed to capture so much beautiful natural reverb on all of the instruments. Astray makes the best use of the swirly, reverby warmth we found there.

‘Moon Creeper’

Sometimes I feel like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2. Walking around outside on a cold night, catching glimpses into people’s houses as families are all cosied in their living rooms and fancy people are drinking wine around their dining table laughing about how fabulous their lives are. Don’t get me wrong, I live in a pretty nice place but I always want what I don’t have and wonder what it would be like to step into someone else’s life.

That said, my house recently had an altercation with my next-door neighbour, whose home and life I had coveted. She got all up us for playing what she called ‘amplified noise’ sometimes on weekend afternoons and threatened to get us kicked out rather than coming around like a normal person to negotiate and talk it out. She confirmed her seriousness by letting us know that she was the one that got The Enmore Theatre to stop music being played past 11pm. She would not stop talking about how terrible our music was! So no matter how beautiful her house is or how divine her summers in Valencia are, I don’t want a bar of it.

The structure of the music tells that story, I think. That swelling celebration at the end, that drawn-out ‘amplified noise’, says: “Fuck you lady, we’re having fun.”

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‘Your Town’ comes out today on vinyl and digital through Poison City. Launch tour dates and other gigs below.

Sun, Aug 15 – The Red Rattler, Sydney, NSW [w/Ghastly Spats + Lovely Head]
Sun, Aug 24 – Poison City Weekender @ Reverence, Melbourne, VIC [sold out]
Thurs, Aug 28 – Newtown Social Club, Sydney, NSW [w/Pity Sex + Postblue]
Sat, Sept 6 – Trainspotters, Brisbane, QLD [w/Multiple Man, Cured Pink + Stress Waves]
Fri, Sept 12 – The Croatian Club, Newcastle, NSW
Fri, Sept 19 – The Old Bar, Melbourne, VIC [w/Gold Class]
Sat, Sept 27 – Chop Shop, Canberra, ACT [w/Wives]