Mousey's new album is difficult to talk about.
Mousey's new album is difficult to talk about.
"There's a lot I can't say," says Sarena Close, aka Mousey. "It's really hard to explain."
Hi. A quick word before we get into today’s newsletter. Sarena Close has written an album that has connected with me in a way many records don’t. It’s short, just 24 minutes, but it’s incredible, a rollercoaster containing the full spectrum of human emotions. If you listen closely, analyse her lyrics and read between the lines, Close hints at what it’s about: an unresolved family situation. I’ve tried to carefully navigate this, to talk about the thing without talking about the thing. Close is worried about revealing too much. “There’s a lot of hurt there,” she told me. Take it easy with this one, but please don’t let the heavy subject matter put you off. This is the best album I’ve heard in a long time.
-Chris.
‘I thought I was going crazy. So I decided to make an album.’
When Sarena Close heads into her staff room at her day job, she often finds herself chatting to colleagues. Those watercooler chats quickly get intense. “People are like, ‘Whoa, Sarena…’” she says. “I have a reputation for ... starting these really deep conversations with people. We can never talk about the weather.”
Close likes to go deep with everything she does. She’s like that at work, and she’s like that with her music too. “I don't think I could write [any other way],” says the Ōtautahi-based singer-songwriter. “It would feel so dumb to me to write about something at surface level. What is the point of that? It has to have a deep purpose.”
Under the name Mousey, Close has written three albums of intensely personal songs that reckon with painful real-life topics. Her latest, released a week ago, dives deeper than ever. Called The Dreams of our Mothers' Mothers!, it's an emotional wrecking ball that attempts to reconcile past family trauma with the present day. It can be brutally bleak, darkly funny and hauntingly beautiful – often in the space of the same song.
Ask Close for specifics and she’ll do something that’s rare for her: she’ll stop talking. “I’ve done a few interviews before this one and I overshared and I didn't like that I overshared,” she says. She speaks slowly, chooses her words carefully. “I’m treading this line ... it’s really hard to explain and I don't want to go into extreme depth.”
On a sunny Friday exactly one week ago, The Dreams of our Mothers’ Mothers! was released. Close took it easy, on her couch, eating French toast, with Better Call Saul on a screen nearby. Aside from checking her phone for messages, she had no plans other than talking to me. “It's a day of relief,” she says, “so I’m potato-ed out.”
She deserves that break. Her new album is the result of a rough time. Close has a two-year-old son and the sleep deprivation has rattled her. “I didn't want to stop doing music [and] I started recording this when he was three months old,” she says. “I was so sleep deprived I thought I was going crazy. So I decided to make an album.”
Initially, she committed to making just one song, but that soon grew to an EP. Then Close realised she had enough material for a full album. It may only be eight songs and 24-minutes long, but the results carry the weight of a tome.
When I tell Close I’m scared of digging too deep, afraid of what I might find, she nods. “Yeah, totally,” she says. “There’s a lot of hurt there.”
On record, Close sings about extremely personal experiences. I want to ask her about them: the milk she’s drinking out of the fridge in ‘Island of Hope, Pt. 2’, the dog taking a tense walk in the grungy single ‘Dog Park’, the school photos held hostage in ‘Home’, and the friend she chews out in ‘E.S.’ “I don’t want to go back to you … until my back’s against the wall,” she coos in IDWGBTY. Who’s that about?
Those questions will have to wait. Close says she can’t – and won’t – answer them. There are real people involved, and she’s worried they don’t get to have their say. “I don't want to manipulate the situation,” she says. Her opinions about the situation keeps changing. These are songs with shifting perspectives. “I’m still changing my mind on how I think and view things all the time,” she says. “There’s no right answer. You’re just looking at things at different angles.”
That duality is captured perfectly on ‘Island of Hope, Pt. 1’ and ‘Pt. 2’. In the first, Close sings the line, “I like swimming,” in a way that’s misty-eyed and mournful, like someone who can no longer do the thing she loves to do. Yet, in ‘Pt. 2,’ she sings it in a way that’s optimistic, uplifting, even euphoric, like someone who’s just plunged into the deep end and found herself.
The kind of music backing her up is as intense as the subject matter. The Dreams of our Mothers' Mothers! rages like Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters and aches like Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago. But it contains moments that could be compared to the throbbing intensity of Portishead’s Third or the angst of Aldous Harding’s Designer. Stand out ‘Opener’ is just one note plucked over and over, with what sound like sampled vocals and wails of Nine Inch Nails feedback in the background.
Close admits there’s catharsis in there, that the pluralities voiced in these songs helped her process the things they’re about. “If I was to only sing, release and perform songs that were exactly aligned with my perspective in that moment, I wouldn't release anything,” says Close. “I wouldn't be able to.”
She’s isn’t finished with the subject matter. “I don’t think this is the last album I’ll write about this subject,” she says. “I don't think I'm done. I live with this darkness and it just stays with me. I've been through so much ... that feels like my safe space, being in that deeper place.”
By the end of recording, though, Close admits she found something resembling salvation. “Cut the cord to start anew / Did I get that from you?” Close sings in ‘E.S.’ That song, with vocals recorded one take in a Melbourne bathroom, is the album’s most hopeful moment. “It's coming to terms with the situation … and saying, ‘Well, this hasn’t worked out but maybe none of us could have actually done any better. Regardless of us doing our best it just didn’t work out.’”
That, I say, sounds like acceptance. Close hears this then throws her head back and laughs. “It’s begrudging acceptance,” she nods. After another laugh, she adds: “With a deep pain.”
The Dreams of Our Mothers’ Mothers! is out now; stream it on Spotify and order vinyl here; find Mousey’s tour dates and tickets here.
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Bonus beat.
