Mere Women: Your Town

The Sydney trio is one of the most forward-thinking and consistently engaging acts in this country, pushing ideas and conventions to the point of forthright innovation. With each release, Mere Women progress even further as songwriters and as a collective. It should only make sense, then, that their second studio album – following on from 2012’s Old Life – collates their best songs yet into the kind of cohesive flow that some bands spend their entire career attempting to find.

It’s a peculiar marriage of icy, dissonant post-punk and surges of jolted, off-kilter rhythms, as vocalist/keyboardist Amy Wilson intensely and acutely details the demise of a relationship. Whether she’s yelping to be heard or leaving confessions of the innermost personal nature, her words resonate powerfully. Indeed, everything you hear on Your Town is written, performed and executed with the utmost conviction, so much so that you will most likely be compelled back to the start of the album the second it finishes.

From its streets to its inhabitants, Your Town is boldly exploratory in both its sonic environment and its subject matter. Genre regardless, this is one of 2014’s essential listens.

4/5.