Profile: Hayley Mary (The Jezabels)
‘Softly spoken,’ ‘relaxed’ and ‘ambivalent’ are not words you would tend to use when describing Australia’s latest indie offering The Jezabels, but that is how frontwoman Hayley Mary comes across when she is not onstage. She leans back on the sofa, playing with the cuffs of her hoody and smiles at me, apologising for some confusion that took place when I arrived.
“Heather can’t be here because she doesn’t feel too well and the other guys are doing another interview, but I can talk to you now if you like?”
Her choice of outfit for the day seems to contradict her relaxed demeanour and tiny frame. She wears a little mesh black vest with possibly the tightest trousers on the planet, laced all the way down the front from thigh to ankle – perhaps to allow room for a little bit of blood flow – finished off with some well worn, no nonsense Doc Martins, softened only by the charcoal grey hoody.
On the other hand, the somewhat intimidating outfit choice for the day makes perfect sense as the lead singer of The Jezabels, with her asymmetric haircut and sharp features, along with the really intense vocals demonstrated on latest release Prisoner, and recent Guardian reviews describing Hayley as a “simmering volcano.”
“Oh, well I don’t know what people say about me. I assume that nobody is ever going to say anything negative to me so it’s hard. You get the occasional bad review but that’s good I think, kind of like coming second in a band competition.” (The Jezabels came second in The Sydney Uni Band Competition when they first formed.) “A lot of people say we won it. It’s quite funny.”
Later, whilst playing a sold out show at London’s 1850 capacity club Heaven, the atmosphere in the crowd is amicable and relaxed, yet the excitement when the band comes onstage is genuine. It is almost touching that so many people would pitch up to watch an unsigned band from the other side of the world play.
“We’re just happy that we can tour internationally. This is pretty incredible and doesn’t always happen to Australian bands. Well, it doesn’t always happen to any band really, but if you start out in London or New York then you might not always need to tour so much as you’re already in the epicentre of everything, whereas we do, so it’s really good that there’s been some interest at all.”
It seems the no frills honesty and consistent plugging away since 2007 – the release of the 3 EPs before Prisoner was mainly a financial decision as they lacked the funds to produce an album – has garnered the band a truly emotionally invested following. The fans greet the astutely DIY affair which included setting up their own equipment onstage and opting out of fancy extras like a backdrop for their show – and indeed a record label – with indifference.
It all just adds to the gritty intensity of what it is this band does, and what this band does is deliver high energy, high pitched, guitar driven indie pop rock, which is hard to pin down into one specific genre. The band describe themselves as ‘intensindie.’
“There’s not really any bands that influence us directly as a band – there’s not many bands or artists that we all like. We get a lot of weird comparisons to bands we’ve never heard of, which is interesting. It’s hard because I would never say that we were influenced by a band but there were a couple of comparisons that we liked, like The Arcade Fire and The National. But those were the only two that we could all appreciate as a band.
It makes writing songs hard as we all have really different tastes; really disparate tastes as well, but I think we’ve come to an understanding. It was harder at first, like it was different forces struggling against each other but now we know which of our individual roles play well together.”
Onstage, Hayley is decked out in trademark black attire. She stands stock still on stage, eyes closed, and as the first few bars of album opener Prisoner wash over the audience with that eerie gothic vibe you begin to think that perhaps this woman, with her completely self absorbed stance and apparent oblivion to those around her, is launching an earnest solo campaign to bring emo back.
This edgy, brooding vibe is almost sabotaged by guitarist Sam Lockward’s obvious glee at being onstage, his excitement genuinely tangible due to a huge smile on his face that doesn’t waver throughout their whole set. And the obvious rehearsal of The Jezabels’ indulgently dramatic performance confirms what the fans already knew. This band, despite there being no bells or explosions in the sky throughout their set, are good at what they do.
The show is well rehearsed, with Hayley reaching all the high pitched notes with complete and utter ease whilst simultaneously lunging erratically from side to side – which didn’t necessarily fit in with the vibe of the show – topped off with periodically pitching forward until she nearly hits the floor during the high notes, of which there are many.
“I guess the big sound evolved. To say it was intentional is weird, intentional is a weird word. You have a desire to do something but you’re not conscious of it until it starts happening and people go ‘Well, did you mean to do that?’ I’ve always liked singers that were quite dramatic. People like Freddie Mercury and Cindi Lauper; that type of thing.
“I’m not a fan of the ‘trying to be cute’ subtle thing that lots of singers do. It’s got its place but it’s just not for me,” Hayley grins. It doesn’t seem like the fans are unduly bothered by the lack of cute either, with melodramatic single Mace Spray and crowd pleasers Dark Storm and Easy To Love creating huge reactions in the audience to the extent where it almost feels as if this decent sized venue is too small at points.
The show is not perfect, and sometimes it seems as if the obvious high points serve just to show up the weaker ones and the mysterious, gothic intense vibe they’ve clearly worked so hard to build up loses credibility somewhat due to the amateur-esque feel of the whole thing.
But after all they are only human, and during the show you, along with all the other fans, do end up genuinely hoping they will catch a break, and as Hayley dramatically throws the microphone on the floor at the end of the set and strides offstage, you almost didn’t want her to trip over it right at the last minute.
