Album Review: Oh Mercy - Deep Heat

Gosh Deep Heat is a different album. After the acoustic, almost solo singer/songwriter sound of Melbourne band Oh Mercy's second album Great Barrier Grief, the electrified menagerie of instruments and styles of their third may come as a bit of a surprise – albeit a very good one – for people who have been following the band. Alex Gow is still very much in front, writing, singing and leading, but there's a whole studio full of musicians all joining in this time. And you can tell everyone's having fun doing it. The album is all play and experimentation. They're playing with genres, with all sorts of instrumentation, with vocals, with lyrics. They're hitting for the complexity and full sound you can achieve with a group of very good, very tight musicians.

Inspired by Paul Kelly, Gow has used this album to experiment with ducking out of the first person and writing from different perspectives. Each song's a story and he's in none of them. Lyrics are a focus on Deep Heat – they are given texture and depth, as are the vocals bringing them to life. The lines flare out into little vocal flourishes, or ooze thickly out over the layers of instruments; Gow's guitar and Eliza Lam's keyboard poke in and out, Steve Berlin's saxophone spills out over the top, Rohan Sforcina's percussion hammers out solidly behind.

Meanwhile, Burke Reid's production is there, holding everything firmly together. Not to say it's overproduced – just well produced; produced by someone who definitely knows what they're doing. There is a balance and a flow to this album that establishes it immediately as something not to be fucked with. It is cohesive, it is whole, and you should put it on and settle in for an album that's leaps and bounds above Oh Mercy's previous goods.