A fan of The Jezabels was asked to describe their music to someone who’s never heard it before. She replied: “it’s like if Evanescence was actually a good band”.
Please don’t take offence if you love Evanescence, but please do take a look at The Jezabels because they’ll probably blow your mind.
Described by lead singer, Hayley Mary, as “abstract, semi-gothic, ephemeral pop”, The Jezabels’ music is charged with multi-dimensional emotionality.
For Hayley, the music they create is an expression of who they are at the particular point in time and space each song is born. “The music I listen to, and the films I like are not always nice. They don’t always make you feel good, but they do make you feel and that’s good. Even if you hate it, that’s good. And it does remind you that you’re alive.“Life’s not just dark, and it’s not just light. There’s a place for completely light and completely dark music, but that’s not my voice, or anyone else’s in the band. We’re the kind of people who see the contradictions. We have our dark times but we definitely have our light times too.”
‘Come Alive’, the first taste-test released from The Jezabels’ new album, ‘Synthia’, is a perfect example of this interplay between darkness and light. “It touches on suicide and coming through a depression, but it’s about overcoming those dark emotions. So, on the whole, it’s an optimistic, life-affirming song.”
The film clip is powerful and unlike anything the band has done before. “In the early days, we had that DIY, almost punk attitude of ‘image doesn’t matter’. And I think that was to our detriment, in that we released some stuff that didn’t really represent us.
“With this record we were like ‘let’s properly take control’. So we started giving the directors briefs, and the lyrics, and the meaning of the lyrics, and we’ve been there every step of the way.”
While they’ve been making some brilliant creative leaps with the new album, they’ve come up against some hurdles too. The band has had to make the difficult decision to cancel their world tour until further notice due to the health of keyboardist, Heather Shannon.
Heather has a unique type of ovarian cancer and, for the last three years, has been fitting treatment in around her life, at home and with the band. However, she has commenced treatment that will require her to stay in Sydney during the time they had planned on touring.
Heather shared her feelings on the situation in a release to the media. "The band means so much to me, and cancelling the tour has been a very sad decision. I am hopeful that in the near future we will be back on the road again playing music we love.”
While the band are 100 per cent behind Heather, they will will be releasing an album they had no intention of writing. “We’d spent a bit of time apart and were just living our lives and being normal people,” Hayley says. “We must’ve been collecting inspiration accidentally because, when we got together, it all just came out.
“We weren’t going to make a record at all, we were going to have a break. But we were rehearsing for a show in Sydney and started playing around with some new ideas and then found ourselves writing four or five songs. And we thought ‘maybe we should keep going’ and then without intending to, we wrote a whole album.”
‘Synthia’ is released 12 February.
