How A Change Of Rural Scenery Inspired New Writing Material For Mere Women

Sydney post-punk outfit Mere Women recently expanded from the original trio incarnation which had served them so well for years into a four-piece with the welcoming of bassist Trish Roberts, and this new dynamic is entirely evident on their accomplished third album Big Skies.

It's a vital and haunting concern, robust and angular with plenty of emotional heft, and frontwoman Amy Wilson puts its strength down in part to that structural realignment.

"I think that to date it's the best thing that we've ever done," she smiles. "It's been a pleasure writing it and recording it and to have that end result and be proud of it, you couldn't ask for more. This is the first time we've written with bass — it's really made us grow as a band. Our progression as a band really shines through on this album, and that's a lot to do with that new element.

"It's about finding the positives in those sort of trying circumstances and triumphing through those hardships or the restrictions that are placed on you."

"It just made it really easy to write, because we'd been playing with the three of us for probably close to five years and to add that new personality and new sound, it just meant that we really just blazed through the writing process once she was a part of the band."

The album came together in the band's city rehearsal space at Black Wire Records, but its actual inspiration stemmed from a more rural setting. "A lot of the inspiration for the album came from when I was living in a small New South Wales country town," Wilson explains. "I was living there all alone so sort of vocally and thematically it sprung from that time, and then the actual writing with all of us there together came about at Black Wire.

"I went out there to work. I'd been working for a not-for-profit and I was living in the city and I was a bit bored in what I was doing, and I just wanted [to do] something crazy so I just packed up my whole life and just went out there for six months.

"I lived in a town in a big old creaky house all by myself, and my workplace was in this really amazing old 1920s milk bar which has been converted into a gallery, it was really wild. And I got to travel all around far west New South Wales meeting lots of women from drought-affected communities. So the inspiration came from a combination of hearing these stories and being isolated and alone myself, and then also having family who grew up in regional New South Wales on the land as well.

"[But] it's not all bleak, the album is not a bleak album. I think it's about finding the positives in those sort of trying circumstances and triumphing through those hardships or the restrictions that are placed on you."