The Jezabels On Being The People's Band

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.”

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