Mousey (2024)
This is the third album from the brilliant Ōtautahi-based and Silver Scroll nominated songwriter Mousey (aka Sarena Close). This time she wants it darker. A less upbeat offering than her first two releases, Lemon Law (2019) and My Friends (2022), The Dreams of Our Mothers’ Mothers! delves into themes of family estrangement, something Sarena has experienced, and maybe has front of mind since becoming a mother herself. (The title is a spin on an excerpt from the work of German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, who has written about breaking of destructive inter-generational patterns.)
Less upbeat doesn’t mean dirge-y, though. The opening track ‘Die on that Hill’ has a vast, wandering-the-moors sound, which gives it an outside of time quality that several of the songs share. The way some of these almost-industrial soundscapes bounce around feels like a nod both to the way family trauma can stubbornly persist despite the decades going by, and to that twilight state that sleep-deprived new mothers fuzzy live in. I love the big production on this album.
But the sparer songs hit hard too, especially ‘Home Alone’, a sad-as take on school photos. “I feel the violation of my school photo sitting in your movie cabinet. Just knowing that you have it makes me want to hire someone to sneak in and take my stuff.” Family is complicated. – LW
