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ON THE COUCH WITH: The Jezabels

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Hi Hayley, how’s it going?
Hayley: Good, a little bit of a cold and cough but I’m good.

Access All Areas.net.au: What’s the band been up to lately?
Hayley: Just been practicing and writing some new songs, and enjoying a little time off touring.

Access All Areas.net.au: How’s touring so far?
Hayley: That was really fun actually but it got a little tiring.

Access All Areas.net.au: With your EP, The Man is Dead out, how are you taking the excitement so far?
Hayley: Everything’s been quite chaotic, so I don’t know if we really noticed there was any excitement but yeah, it’s been good hearing some feedback and criticisms, stuff like that. It’s been a much better response than we thought and that people seem to take it so seriously to an extent even if they don’t like it.

Access All Areas.net.au: The moment that you guys finished the EP, did you feel that it was good?
Hayley: Yeah I think we felt really good about it. Just the experience of recording it as well was such a pleasant one, we just felt good about the whole process and we’re working with people we enjoy working with. As I’ve said, we recorded it quite a few months before it was released so there wasn’t that excitement but it was good that…people got to listen to it.

Access All Areas.net.au: Disco Biscuit Love has explored real themes such as drug abuse. Did the music or lyrics come first for this song?
Hayley: The lyrics came first. (Laugh) I was actually talking about this to someone before…he was saying it was a coincidence that the music is sort of representative of the dance beats that we were kind of talking about, the dance culture. But I was saying it wasn’t really a coincidence at all, it’s kind of ironic or satirical in a sense that it almost sounds like a dance song even though it’s kind of like a critique of dance culture to an extent. (Laugh) So he hadn’t picked up on the irony at all so clearly it’s not that obvious. A lot of people think from the title, Disco Biscuit Love that we actually love disco biscuits (laugh) but it’s not…

Access All Areas.net.au: What are your thoughts on dance culture?
Hayley: I’ve actually become more open about it since writing that song but I find that sometimes you can come across false perceptions of love when people are on drugs and that kind of thing but that’s kind of what the song was about. I suppose I see it as a bit of a place of escapism, which I’m not really making value judgment on. Like when I was younger, I do think that was kind of lame but now I kind of see why people do that, and they see places of escapism are also places of freedom especially when you’re dealing with queer sexuality or something like that. In the queer community, dance has a really important and positive effect on their lives…the sense of community. I don’t know, I kind of opened my mind a lot to it since when I first arrived in Sydney…It’s like an 18-year-old who wrote that song (laugh).

Access All Areas.net.au: Old Little Girls is quite different from Disco Biscuit love, sort of reminiscent of Tori Amos to me. How do you feel about that song?
Hayley: Well I will say that I haven’t heard Tori Amos though, I’ve been more of a Kate Bush fan so maybe that was what you were hearing…That song was a bit more experimental in its narrative like it’s not as straightforward as Disco Biscuit Love and I’m hoping that reflects our maturity, that we’re growing…in songwriting. I guess it’s a little bit to do with sort of similar things to what we’ve talked about with Disco Biscuit Love, like gender and sexuality, and how confusing it can be as well but on a different level to the other song.

Access All Areas.net.au: So what do you think is the key to good songwriting?
Hayley: I haven’t got a clue, cause it sort of just depends on what you think is a good song. Some people would say, knowing the formula but I personally think you do actually have to feel something to the extent you could pump out of what might be sort of a good song, good pop songs even and I agree that a lot of those songs are good songs. But for a song to really get to me and really mean something to me, I’d wanna listen to it over and over again and actually have to be wanting to express something human, I think.

Access All Areas.net.au: Which song was harder to write?
Hayley: I would say Unmarked Helicopters – the last one. Some of the parts came really easily but then piecing it all together, to tell you the truth, I didn’t personally get the full extent of the meaning. That song’s been rewritten quite a few times. I didn’t get the full extent of the meaning until I have to write one final line the day we were recording it. What was the line…there were sort of two distinct sections in that song, like the verse/melodic bit then there was a breakdown, and I had to write a vocal line (I’m sort of babbling, laugh) but I had to write a vocal line to bridge between those, and it sort of ended up being what the meaning of the song was, and I was sort of like ‘this is important!’ and I’ve got two minutes to think of it. And yeah that song was really hard but once I got the meaning, it became the most coherent song in my head, strangely enough. Yeah, it’s kind of like when we were describing it, it made us all feel like it was a dystopian fable (laugh), made us feel a little weird but might not have the same effect on actual listeners but for members of the band. That’s how we felt about it at the time.

Access All Areas.net.au: You’ll be performing in Sydney this month, what would the gig mean to you?
Hayley: I guess it’ll just be an opportunity for us to show some of our new songs but still kind of up in the air about them and also, performance for us is a place where we do definitely work out the vibe and feeling of the song…sometimes it’s an angry song or a happy song…It comes out in how I feel naturally performing it, and that kind of dictates the meaning. Cause hopefully when you’re headlining, which we don’t do much, there are some people who are actually there to listen to you, you’d feel like it’s very important, what you do, to an extent…to get it right. I don’t mean to sound we’re self-important but I just mean you take it more seriously when people are actually there to see you.

Access All Areas.net.au: How do you think performing has changed you personally and music-wise?
Hayley: Yeah a lot. I guess it’s made me more confident…the flaws of being a person, I guess, my own personal flaws in that I know when I go watch someone performing, I actually thrive on the human flaw element of performance. So being on stage make you feel vulnerable because you are and because people can see your weaknesses but the fact that you come off, and sometimes it’s bad but sometimes it’s good. And you come off, even though it’s a terrible performance, you survive it still. It kind of makes you feel, ‘oh the flaws that I have are fine’, like no one really gives a crap (laugh) but sometimes they like you for them, that’s an awesome thing that it does. And also musically, like I was saying before, definitely brings the song into its elements a bit, sort of convince people.

Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve played several gigs, including performing with Josh Pyke. Which gig has been your favourite?
Hayley: Wagga Wagga was amazing. For some weird reason, and this didn’t happen anywhere else…There were several people who knew who I was and was singing along, like it was incredible like we’ve never had that before, cause I guess we’re relatively unknown new band, and especially out of Sydney, like no one knows who we are so it was just shocking…they knew who we were, and they were happy. Happy people are always cool (laugh).

Access All Areas.net.au: Growing up, did you expect to be in a band, writing and recording? How did you first discover your love for music?
Hayley: Growing up, I didn’t actually think I would be in a band, solo or whatever but I’ve kind of been writing songs personally since I was six or five, really lame, shitty and things like that. I kind of always knew that I’d write songs and when I got to Sydney I felt this desire to actually contribute to the world a bit as opposed to just I don’t know, I just wanted to find something, some kind of outlet. I guess I got this crazy desire to just write songs and get them out there even though I’ve been writing songs for a long time. The people in the band are greater than I would ever have imagined. They’re three amazing musicians and people as well…that I could never have dreamed about…

Access All Areas.net.au: There has been an explosion of indie-rock bands in Australia. Do you think it is harder to make a breakthrough in the music industry?
Hayley: I think it probably is but to an extent, there are different levels of breaking through. If you are a band like us, hoping to maintain independent status, it is really hard financially on us all, it sort of ‘argh it’s such a struggle’ all the time but making it to me or breaking through…we’ve sort of developed enough…I think you’d call it grassroots method, it’s like touring and actually contacting people by performing to them. That’s the kind of level we want to make it at in a sense. I don’t know if that’s kind of punk-rock or something (laugh). Something like that cause I don’t see us ever appealing to…even though we’re kind of pop, we don’t see ourselves appealing to mainstream without having to kind of homogenise ourselves or make ourselves a little less ourselves, which we’re really not as a band, willing to do. Making it for us is kind of having some people at every show who would say ‘hi!’, ‘we like you’ sort of, but yeah I know what you mean. It’s definitely harder to make it to any big scale, it’s cause we have different standards, I think.

Access All Areas.net.au: What do you guys hope to achieve in the next year?
Hayley: We’re gonna record another EP, we sort of struck together this idea of a trilogy of EP’s. We’re not entirely sure if it’ll be successful but in the current climate of not being able to afford things, the way the world seems to be, we thought personally it’s harder to put forward the money to buy an album on the part of fans, we’re thinking of a ten-dollar EP and another one and they can be somatically linked hopefully and maybe compile them as a three-piece album later. And I think hopefully another tour. We really love touring, touring seems to be what it’s about and I’m really attracted to that sort of nomadic lifestyle so yeah, as many tours as we can get, in the next year I think.

Access All Areas.net.au: We hope to hear more from you again. Lastly, what would you like people listening to your music to know about The Jezabels?
Hayley: Wow! (Laugh) I guess that personally, I would like them to know that there’s room for, if they wish, to interpret the music any way they want and that there’s no one any way any of us would like for anyone to sort of see it. We like to hope that there’s bit of room for that ambiguity. Despite what I’ve ever said about it, take it and make it your own as you want. That’s what I’ve always found I enjoy in music.

Access All Areas.net.au: Cool, Thanks a lot for your time. Good luck with everything.
Hayley: Thanks a lot!

Interview by Sandy Tan

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

It’s rare that a band really stands for something, unified in spirit and energised by a shared idea. The Jezabels are one such band, and ultimately they’re the only bands that count.

Mixing classic pop and disco with an expansive, emotionally sophisticated attitude to indie rock, The Jezabels present like few bands in recent years. Onstage, they’re intensity personified, with a presence and purpose so emotionally raw, brittle, directed and genuine; they make most other groups look contrived.

“The first CD I ever had was ABBA Gold, and more ABBA Gold.” – Hayley M.
”Hayley and I went to school together, and started writing ballads.” – Heather S.
(Why did you meet?)
“Necessity.” – Hayley M.

Hayley and Heather shared a childhood in Byron Bay on the NSW coastline. While their peers were getting high and joining hardcore bands, these two misfits were growing up strange in an isolated town, until they met at a talent quest. When they left their hometown to study, the girls met, and are now joined by, fellow Sydney Uni scholars Nik K and Sam L. Their bass-less arrangement is comprised of Heather’s Conservatorium-trained piano playing, Sam’s intuitive rhythm guitar, anchored by Nik’s nuanced, explosive drumming and capped by Hayley’s incredible presence and unlikely voice.

Their sophisticated song writing combines with Hayley’s scorching intensity to make them a potentially iconic group for young people, but particularly the young women for whom the group have an obviously directed focus.

At live shows, crowds are struck by the energy, intellect, ambition and emotional honesty they bring to the stage. An audience can’t help but invest in them.

”I’ve been singing my throat hoarse, striving for perfection and not quite getting there… I used to write things I couldn’t sing, but eventually I’d HAVE to get there.” – Hayley M.

”She seems to write the lyrics and then realise what it’s about two years afterwards. Hayley’s lyrics are didactic, about teenage girls and what they should watch out for.” - Heather S.

Watching them play Disco Biscuit Love, with its epic themes of dislocation, drug-abuse, gender politics and romantic wreckage, you understand the band in a way that exceeds my ability to explain here. There is real emotional force, ambition and something necessarily unarticulated at work behind the music. The Jezabels are struggling to say something, and to embody it physically, so that it might be felt. For an audience, it’s an electric experience.

“I think that’s the best thing about being innocent; you see the stage and think there is some truth to be explored there.” – Sam L.

In their relatively short lifespan they’ve supported some of Australia’s most exciting bands (Regurgitator, Bluejuice, Duke Of Windsor, Van She, Ghostwood, Cassette Kids, Damn Arms, Sparkadia) and played a bunch of great festival gigs, (Playground Weekender, Beachball, Come Together) but the best is most certainly yet to come for this wonderful young band.

Their debut EP The Man Is Dead, in store February 2009 independently through MGM Distribution.

The Jezabels Are:
Nik K - Drums
Sam L - Guitar
Hayley M - Vocals
Heather S – Piano

www.myspace.com/jezabelsband

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