Creative Tension

"That's not creepy, I thought you were gonna ask to marry me!” laughs The Jezabels' leading lady Hayley Mary amidst a slight misunderstanding between the words creepy and crazy. “I thought you said creepy, and I was thinking 'Oh jeez what's he gonna ask?'” Put it down to it being 8am in the UK, a dodgy line, or your humble scribe's penchant for poor enunciation but it's all part of a very relaxed chat with someone who has become, in a relatively short space of time, one of this country's true rock femme fatales – and someone who has probably by now received more than her share of obsessive fans' marriage proposals. Or not.

The crazy question in… er question, was in fact regarding whether the four-piece – which includes keyboardist Heather Shannon, guitarist Sam Lockwood and drummer Nik Kaloper – have even had the chance to start thinking about a follow-up to last year's epic, Australian Music Prize-winning debut album, Prisoner, amidst all the maelstrom of touring here and abroad. “There are plans that we aim to record another album at the start of next year,” Mary begins,” so there's talk of where we might be, I think it'll be in Australia - hopefully we'll have a bit of time there then. And we hope [to release it] halfway through next year, but we gotta just try and fit it in time-wise.”

And when it comes to our latest and greatest rock export, time is definitely the key question. Spending as much time here as abroad has seen them take the UK and Europe by storm, finding plenty of fans in some less-than-expected places. “[Overseas has been] really, really good, particularly in Europe, especially in Germany; I don't know why we seem to do well in Germany. But yeah, we've had a few crazy sell-out shows in places we would never have even imagined playing. It's been great, it's pretty exciting.” It's also meant they've had to adapt rather quickly to life on the international road, something Mary says they – and herself in particular – have finally been getting the hang of. “Yeah we've totally gotten better at it. I used to really suck at it. In a sense it was just something that would make me really tired, and I couldn't deal with it and I'd wanna go home a lot,” she admits rather frankly.

However they've found ways to adapt: “We all decided to just abandon having homes and just live out of our suitcases. And once we did that I didn't get homesick that much anymore - more because I don't have a home to think about. I just kind of get used to being comfortable wherever I am. It's definitely tiring at first, and it's tiring anyway… But if it was something else, doing a job you didn't like that requires you to be on the road all the time, you'd probably get more tired of it. But we get to travel and play music, which is a pretty good life.”

Something else the band has had to rapidly grow into is the size of stadiums and festival crowds that the group now has to rule over. And for a demure little thing such as Mary – renowned in earlier years for being quite reserved in the smaller clubs and venues of The Jezabels' humble beginnings – it's been somewhat easier than you might think. “It's not really conscious, you just become aware that the stage is bigger. So I just kinda stomp around, and walk back and forth really,” another hearty stream of laughter spills down the line, “and I do some really stupid dance moves that have become more exaggerated as I get more space to fill.

“I'm a really small person, sometimes on stage I just look like the tiniest little human being just, like, storming back and forth. I think it looks kinda ridiculous, but I think it's just something that you automatically do when you're around these people. Like even in the front row, sometimes people are fifty metres away from you and you kind of feel like you need to get close to them in some way, so you just have to make your actions bigger.” Crowd response is also pretty important, and for a band with such rousing anthems as Endless Summer, that is fortunately a problem they don't have to face too often. “I've never really thought about it. I think it's just something you do because, for us, and it's the case for a lot of bands, crowd vibe and crowd reaction is all you go off… Especially at a festival, when you know you're gonna have pretty crap sound because they've only got like ten or fifteen minutes to set up the whole stage, you just have to go, 'Alright, people can hear us, that's all I need'… It's just a natural inclination to fill the stage. I do find it difficult because I feel so small. I used to just stand around like a crazy person on the spot, but now I have to run laps of the stage.”

One of the keys to The Jezabels' ever-increasing stage size, and just the ability to write a dang good rock song, has been the meeting of four individual musical minds, coming together in various ways to always find the best way to make songs work. “It's sort of like the creative tension of our different tastes. Like, making them work, I think the best songs – we've got a lot of songs where one element of the band will dominate, and that's fine – but I think our best songs, ones that work for other people, are ones where all of the separate elements work together. Which is really hard to get. But when everyone is getting some kind of creative satisfaction, and the song is still working, I think they're our strongest songs.”

It's also a strong collaborative process and ethic that keeps The Jezabels humming along, with only a few stipulations with regards to how a song is eventually nutted out. “Every song is a collaboration, apart from the lyrics, because I need to write everything myself to be able to sing it. But yeah, we all get together and it'll start with someone's idea, like a chord progression or a melody, and then shape what we play around the original idea and everyone gets a loose structure. It's definitely not until I kinda figure out the vocal melody that the guys know where the chorus or verse is, or whatever. It's a really weird process, just getting all these different parts and making them flow. It's quite democratic - you tend to keep going until everyone's comfortable and feeling like they have their place.”

In the meantime, The Jezabels assume their rightful place at the top of the Aussie rock heap. Let's just hope nothing pesky like marriage gets in the way… And if you have ideas of locking down Ms Mary, don't take the route Drum did, without realising. “It's amazing though, I've gotta admit no one really does the sexual harrassment thing to me, they're always like really, really nice. And it's weird; why don't people try and hit on me in a normal, kinda sleazy way… Everyone's always too nice.” She chuckles, before clarifying... “No, I'm joking, please don't tell people to ask me out. I was making a joke.”