- Big Skies is the third album from Sydney's Mere Women, the second to be released on Melbourne's Poision City Records and first to feature the band's new quartet lineup (adding bassist Trisch Roberts – formerly of the similarly minded No Art – after prior album Your Town). Big Skies matches the band's personnel expansion with a subtle progression of the band's murky, propulsive post-punk. Sonically things are actually pretty similar – previous albums were already somewhat layered with Flyn McKinnirey's guitar and certainly not lacking in low-end thanks to singer Amy Wilson's synths – with the addition of bass not adding extra heft to the band's sound so much as additional punch and forward motion. The result is a heightened sense of urgency in the songs contained herein, despite the band staying on a fairly even keel at all times - somehow Mere Women manage to sound simultaneously restrained and bombastically epic, best exemplified on tracks like 'Birthday' and 'Come Back'. The fact that vocalist Wilson so often turns individual lines of lyrics into repeated chants adds to this sense. Her voice is the centre around which the rest of the band whirls, commanding attention and defining the core of the song – she always sounds powerful, but never histrionic or anything other than completely in control.

Much of the album is made up of thick, claustrophobic guitar workouts like the singles 'Drive' and the album's title track (which, as an aside, has a weird resemblance to Don Henley's 'The Boys Of Summer'). Mere Women are smart enough to regularly change things up, though, with palate cleansers like the moody piano-led 'Curse' and brief noise-scape 'Visitor' allowing the listener a brief reset before the next storm. Just as things are at risk of wearing out their welcome as the record reaches its final stretch, Big Skies opens up with its last two songs. Penultimate track 'Tin Rooves' allows itself some wide open sonic space, driven forward by Kat Byrne's stuttering drum-beat and piano chords under an elegiac melody, while 'Wanderer' juxtaposes the prior track's newfound space against the rest of the record's wall of sound to triumphant effect. These closing songs feel like the band opening up, turning their gaze outward from their previously insular world.

That said, Big Skies is anything but an insular record. Despite its often claustrophobic feel, Wilson's lyrics deal with much more outward-looking issues, such as modern feminism and a general feeling of 'otherness'. Perhaps the oppressive nature of the music is designed to give a sense of the isolation Wilson feels? Whatever the aim, Big Skies certainly makes a powerful impact.

- Cameron Smith.