Mousey: The Dreams of Our Mothers' Mothers! (digital outlets)

Ōtautahi Christchurch's Sarena Close (aka Mousey) has appeared at Elsewhere for all of her albums, no surprise given we said of her debut Lemon Law, “even just a cursory listen would tell you there is a great depth of lyrical, vocal and songwriting talent here”

We interviewed her at the time and subsequently published her thoughts on the making of her second album My Friends. We liked that one a lot also and our review concluded "My Friends is both and expansion and consolidation of Mousey's range and if it can feel like it too frequently shifts its footing, you can't deny she has the various vehicles for what she wants to convey".

For this impressive if unnervingly personal third album, the bright pop of previous albums 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 which 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 where 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, are bravely therapeutic and – although replete with cathartic discomforts – end with something approaching forgiveness and the artist ready to “cut the cord to start anew”.

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here.