The Dreams of our Mothers’ Mothers!
by Mousey
For this impressive, if unnervingly personal, third album, the bright pop of previous albums by Mousey, (Ōtautahi Christchurch’s Sarena Close) has been sublimated in favour of coded, autobiographical confessionals which ache with grief (Home Alone).
Appropriately, art music comes to the fore on the electro-shuffle of Dog Park (with the hook of “if anything happens to him I’ll never forgive you”) and the scratchy, reductive broodiness of Opener (“white light in a black hole”). They are pop, but not.
Mousey’s pseudonym – lifted from Bowie’s Life on Mars – suggests a timidity that hasn’t been evident in her confident, mature work, but this very different album is also courageous.
In IDWGBTY, this new mother reveals, “I think about my son, I don’t want him to see the way you make me. I don’t wanna go back to you … I’ve been working on myself. I’m big and thick and tall. I don’t wanna go back to you.”
The complete lyrics of the wispy miniature Island of Hope Pt. 1 are, “I like swimming, can’t feel my sweat, the fires in my belly are soaking wet” which leads into the folksy Pt. 2, when she asks if she can stay on, as if in retreat from the world or reluctant to return to whatever brought her to this refuge of hope.
Of this album Mousey has said, “I’ve pushed myself to the limits of my vulnerability” and you can feel it.
Her previous album was about friends, but these new songs are emotionally riven as they deal with estrangement from family. They’re bravely therapeutic and – although replete with cathartic discomforts – end with something approaching forgiveness and the artist ready to “cut the cord to start anew”.
Kind Hands
by Goodwill
Goodwill – Ōtautahi’s Will McGillivray, formerly of alt rockers Nomad, not to be confused with electronica artist The Nomad – produced and mixed Mousey’s impressive Mothers.
And here, he steps out with a debut album of lo-fi alt folk pop that spotlights an aching and sometimes anguished vocal delivery atop scratchy guitars, prominent percussion and a smattering of old-school synths.
As with his production for Mousey, this approach gives a tactile sense to the songs, which often have an unprepossessing, but ultimately engaging, sense of despondency: the ambiguous “I’m so happy I could die” in the finger-picking Obamas; the monochrome folk pop of Xhale, which devolves into appropriately organised chaos in the closing moments.
Goodwill knows his way with a melody, too: there’s something of a beaten-down Evan Dando on Kill the Guilt; the ambient centrepiece instrumental Kalm could have appeared on Brian Eno’s mid-70s Obscure Records label, Plans finds him at his most engaging on a yearning song, and the final track I Will Never Let You Down is as simple, honest and straightforward as its title.
So as with Mousey, Goodwill ends his journey with light breaking through.
Mousey and Goodwill’s albums are available digitally and on vinyl. Mousey and Goodwill tour: Darkroom, Christchurch, November 16; Moon, Wellington, November 22; Neck of the Woods, Auckland, November 23.
