Keeping Vigilant

There's something refreshing about speaking to The Jezabels. There's a sense of honesty and earnestness about everything from their music to the state of the music industry coming from Hayley Mary, frontwoman for the internationally beloved group. She's clad in all-black with thick eyeliner; it's a gothic outfit in line with her interest in the style, the music and even the literature. She talks freely as we walk the streets of Newtown without umbrellas, about where to go for lunch or indeed, the nature of music criticism itself.

When asked about their nomination (and subsequent win) at The Rolling Stone Awards for Single Of The Year for The End, Mary is frank. “I always feel more hopeful about People's Choice Awards than I do about Critic's Choice Awards for us. I feel we're a little bit more of a people's band.”

They certainly perceive themselves in that way and attract a wide cross-section of people to their shows. “We just attract really normal kind of anyone people, like there's not a type, there's not a style, there's not a scene, there's just a lot of single 40- or 50-year old men, a lot of young girls, a lot of couples, a lot of gay guys and gay girls, a lot of just anyone and everyone. It's really just very mixed. I don't think they have anything in common with each other particularly, it's just that they are all at our show… It's a good and a bad thing because sometimes a scene can help you, but also I guess it's cool to resonate with just the common person for no apparent reason.”

Critically however, the circumstances seem different. Mary has a lot to say about the way The Jezabels' albums and EPs have been received. “The one thing I don't want to give into is certain streams of criticism that require that old-fashioned notion of authenticity you have to have to be good, particularly in this country. They love pub-rock, they love The Drones, they love dudes singing raw music, and I know what we could do to get a good review from all the people that have always and will always hate us, but I don't ever want to do that. Because I feel like what I do is quite a girly thing and I don't ever want to change it to get the recognition of the fathers of music criticism. I want to keep going despite them.

“I think the other thing is that it's cool to stay somehow alternative, because I know what happens to girly music is that it becomes mainstream. I know that we are becoming more and more mainstream and therefore our critics will hate us even more, but the thing I'd love to do as a band and as a person, is to stay good and also be popular and prove that those things are not mutually exclusive. A lot of bands do it, like Depeche Mode, and The Pixies who we supported recently. And they're great, great pop bands that are alternative, subversive and amazing, and they're pop. I just feel like in this country in particular there's this misunderstanding. We don't mind international bands who do it, but we don't want our own bands to do it or something. Maybe our own bands don't have the avenues to do it. I'd like to be a pop band and continue to be ourselves, that's one thing I'd like to do, but I don't really think of myself as a role model. I just kind of am just an angry person that seems to be on this mission for god knows what reason. I don't even know what I'm doing most of the time, to be honest. I just kind of wing it.”

Mary ties this idea of masculine music criticism to a distinction between “masculine” high culture, and things that are more feminine. “I'm cool with getting a negative review if it's intelligent and thought-out and all that stuff, but I think that sometimes people just dismiss us completely. I've been called things like histrionic, and I'm cool with that, but they think it's a bad thing, whereas I think I'm doing it on purpose because I'm alluding to gothic literature or something that they just haven't read.

“There's a whole tradition of stuff that appeals to women that is considered low culture and crap, but sometimes I just think it's because it appeals to the feminine side of people that it's considered low culture. It's something that's started bothering me as I got into this industry, if you look throughout history at what is considered crap, or the standard of bad, it's also, I don't think coincidentally, defined by who likes it, and it's always teenage girls. And the standard of what's good for music is always middle-aged men that like it. I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it's inherently the kind of sexist standpoint of music criticism.”

She admits that sometimes she feels resentful, but then acknowledges her way of dealing with the challenges of working in a male-dominated industry. “I try not to think about it way too much but I do think about it way too much. You try and surround yourself with good people, that's how you deal with it. It's not the hardest life, I live, I live a pretty easy life.”

These challenges are part of the reason The Jezabels consider themselves a feminist band. Originally their material was quite overtly gender-focused, as a reaction to the music prevalent in Mary and keyboardist Heather Shannon's hometown of Byron Bay: hardcore and blues. Now their music also talks about age. “Age is, kind of everyone can relate to that, getting older, becoming cynical or whatever. But I think you could argue that it still is more pertinent to women because they get less sexy as they get older, whereas men can become more sexy.

“I remember reading an interview with Kylie Minogue once, talking about that – how pop stars have to get plastic surgery and look great, particularly women, but rock stars who are more often men, they can be Keith Richards and look really uncool, well not uncool, but look cool by being old and haggard. It's not really just about looks; it's just about that life cycle where you start feeling like you're less valuable to the world, and you're less up with the times and technology and stuff. I'm sure that's not a gender issue but it does definitely get women down, I think, maybe moreso than men.”

It becomes clear that Mary struggles with the same issues around gender and self-esteem as many other women, young and old. “I'm definitely a lot more confident than I actually am when I'm on stage. I feel more powerful on stage than I actually feel. It's kind of like you can be what you want to be on stage, so I sort of can define who I want to be; perhaps someone with a strong voice and someone who's smart as well as attractive and all of these things you can pretend to be and people might believe you if you do it convincingly. Off stage I don't feel like any of these things, I feel like I have no voice whatsoever and that I'm just a weak little person.”

Mary and the rest of The Jezabels – Shannon, drummer Nik Kaloper and guitarist Sam Lockwood – head out on tour this month following a gap of more than 18 months since their last string of Australian headline shows. They played the Laneway circuit soon after they returned home from touring and recording second album, The Brink, in London, and were admittedly daunted about playing after “the biggest act in the world” Lorde. “'Will they still like us? Will they remember us?'” Mary wondered. But they're more at ease now. “I'm glad to be back and people have been really good to us so I don't know, you can't tell what's going to happen, but we've had a really great reaction. I'm stoked about it.”

The tour is an excuse to show off The Brink, a more focused album from the quartet than their talked-about debut LP, 2011's Prisoner. “The first thing I think is that it's more coherent, it's more song-driven, and it's warmer,” says Mary. “It's probably more optimistic, musically. Lyrically it might be ambiguous; it's kind of a bit depressing at times, but if we look at the lyrics in the context of the songs I think it's a more positive record in general, which is the result of us being in a more negative place I think when we wrote it. We were actually all quite troubled at the time of writing but we got through it via writing. It sounds really wanky but it was quite therapeutic writing that album. The result of it is leads people to believe that it's probably more vacuous because it's not as dark but it's that 'We need to write a record that's not as dark, otherwise we're going to feel shit'.

“It's about hope, really; so was Prisoner though, hope and fear, and kind of teetering between them both. But I think it's more hopeful, it's more pushing towards the hope side of the spectrum.”