Hayley Mary, of The Jezabels fame, has been releasing music under her own name since her stellar debut EP, The Piss, The Perfume, in 2020. Since then, she has released two more EPs, and today, she has released her grand and ambitious debut LP, Roman XS.
The album was produced by Hayley and The Jezabels producer, Lachlan Mitchell, with co-production from Johnny Took (DMA’S) and Lewis Stephenson (The Belligerents, Moses Gunn Collective).
Hayley has a national tour lined up to showcase the album. It kicks off tonight at Old Habits in Perth and will then hit Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. Get along if you can and support live music.
Roman XS was an ambitious project for a solo artist, and Hayley has been richly rewarded with the fruits of her labours. Our reviewer Dylan Marshall has described Roman XS as “an album that traverses luscious and expansive sounds, all tied up within classic rock vibes and feels.” You can read Dylan’s review HERE.
I chatted with Hayley last night, on the eve of the release. We discussed the process behind the record’s creation, the challenges of making such an ambitious album, and her upcoming national tour.
Hi Hayley, how are you doing?
I’m good – I’m somewhat busy with all of the stuff with the release going on tomorrow. Good but overwhelmed. It’s DIY here – there’s more to do these days than there used to be
No doubt – and as an independent artist, doing it all yourself makes it harder
There’s social media to contend with, and I don’t have management or a record label.
I never had a record label with The Jezabels, really, apart from licensing deals overseas. But we had management, and they do a lot …. it turns out (laughs). I knew they did, it’s just a different world. It’s good to learn new skills. I’m enjoying it, I’m just doing too many peoples jobs at the moment.
I’m sure – so the reviews are coming in. 4.5 stars from our reviewer, Dylan Marshall for Roman XS…
Yeah – wow – that’s the first one I’ve heard about – which is exciting. For a while there I wasn’t sure I was going to get any reviews. You know how its such a strange climate out there. Sometimes you are just peering into the abyss. It was quite a cathartic bit of news to hear
We both think it’s a great album It’s a grand, lush, big body of work
It’s excessive – that’s why I called it that. It is lush. The main thing I wanted to do with this album is to take my time. My previous solo EP’s were straightforward collections of rock n roll songs. They took me out of that concepting brooding album world. When Covid was happening I then decided I could put out something with a bit of depth behind it. And that takes time.
Every song is over four minutes, apart from one. It’s a wall of sound of many of them.
Yeah, it is a wall of sound. A lot of that is to with Lachlan Mitchell, the producer. He loves layers. It worked out that my voice works best with a wall of sound. I really like projection singing. I like the old school emotion that comes from a wall of sound. I suppose in the age of minimalistic music, it’s not on-trend, but I crave it the most.
I think people most often go for what’s affordable – a drum machine, synth and vocals and they are just about there
This is what I meant by an act of excess. Doing a rock record as a solo artist is pretty stupid financially speaking. As a solo artist you have to pay all the players and studio and everything else. There is a reason why DJ’s are the prominent artists of the time. I have respect for that. I just wanted to put a finger up to it, and do the opposite to what I should be doing from a business perspective and make a rock record that is a wall of sound.
You could have easily taken your first 2 EP’s – The Piss, The Perfume and The Drip together, thrown them together as an album and it would have been great.
Well yeah, the last 2 EPs were meant to be an album. It was a good album actually, but it was overshadowed by COVID. And you only get once chance at a debut album – so instead of putting out an album I broke it up into 2 EPs. They did ok – but under the shadow (of covid) it felt like screaming into the abyss. It felt better to put something together as an album post-covid that I might be able to tour nationally. I wanted that music out, but didn’t get to tour it.
The songs on this album – did you start writing after you released those EPs?
A bit of a mix. You always have ideas in various places that you forget about, or you didn’t like at the time but come back to. On my first EP I wrote those songs in a certain timeframe, but with the album you kind of collect things from various years. Some songs were written ten years ago, then there were songs from last year.
The last song, “Eris”, was probably the first song I wrote that embarked me on the solo career. It was the day that The Jezabels cancelled our world tour because Heather was sick, and it was the day that David Bowie died.
I got trapped in London, because I was supposed to be leaving for the tour, but because the tour was cancelled. I found myself having to move into a hostel in Brixton temporarily. David Bowie was from Brixton, so it was chaos on the streets. People were celebrating his life and mourning him. It was the most horrible day. I didn’t know David Bowie, but it felt like you did know him, it mattered for some reason. It felt like chaos and my life had been turned upside down and it was horrible. I wrote this song about Eris, the goddess of chaos, feeling like she was making herself present again, after being kicked out by the gods for too long.
I was a lost soul for a long time after that. It took me a long time to release The Piss, The Perfume EP as I didn’t really know what I was doing. Over the years, I’ve collected a bunch of songs.
More recent times – co-writes with my husband, Johnny “One Last Drag”, and the more 80s ones I did with Lewis Stephenson such as “What Makes a Man Cry” and “The Lonely One’ – they were quite recent – a real mix.
And you had the beautiful track, “Blunt” with the great Jack Colwell who has tragically recently passed away
I’m devastated about that. Devasted on a personal level. You take things for granted, you really do. We had a bunch of demos that weren’t finished that I was thinking I’d love to put them on the next record. Wow. It’s so sad.
You’ve done cracking videos for the album.
Yeah – I don’t mind making videos. A lot of artists hate them, but I think they are fun. I’m about to drop another one (“Some Rainbows”), it’s simple and DIY – it’s coming tomorrow. It’s very DIY I edited.
The “Eighteen” video was a lot fun
The vampire!
Yes – it was stupidly fun. There’s two ways of going, you can go super expensive old school if you have the budget, or you can go DIY tiktok loop. I kind of do a mix between the two. Videos are weird. Many people say that don’t matter but I really think they do.
I think sometimes they draw people into the song, and they’ll explore more of your work from there
Sometimes its difficult to talk about a song and what it means, cause it’s so subjective – it’s in an inner world of yours. When you bring in a visual collaborator to interpret the song, it can explain it to you in an unexpected way. I’ve often struggled with knowing what my songs are about. But with “Eighteen” I explained what I though it was about to the director. When you are young you want to be 18 and when you are old you want to be 18 too. It’s sad – you are always looking forward or back, and she was ‘what if you were stuck 18? – that would really suck.’
Then this idea of being stuck as a vampire because you were bitten on your 18th birthday who, happens to be from Heartbreak High .
That’s great – a bit of a leap perhaps!
Ha – but the idea of being stuck at 18, the nostalgia we have of forward ‘lookingness’ that we are always looking for a time other than now is so common. My thought was that we would be a ghost of ourselves, but a vampire is a type of ghost in its own way. When you’re not living in the moment there’s a sad ghostly gothicness to your existence if you just let life pass you by. I liked her interpretation of it as well.
What’s been the most enjoyable part of putting this album together?
It’s been really hard if I’m frank. describing the most enjoyable part is a difficult thing because it’s been a process of doing a lot of new things which I wasn’t very good at on my own. Learning to play the guitar, writing all the song parts with less collaborators – I don’t have a band. Making all the decisions – four times what I was used to because I manage myself. It was a really big battle, but I felt I needed to do it. I don’t really know why. I’m not sure if its an ego thing, or I felt I had something more to give than I previously had.
Honestly, the funnest thing is that it’s all over, and I can hear the album. And I’m very proud of it. There was a long time there when I was unsure if it was going to happen. You felt like you were underwater trying to get out. It was very expensive and long. I was making it in Sydney so there was lots of back and forth from Melbourne. I was making the decisions on my own. I could have done something easier if I’d done what people wanted me to do, or what would have been advised.
It’s easy to be driven to making content these days, tempted and coerced into making quick content – …to feed the algorithm. I was told I’d lose momentum by taking this long, and I did, but what I have now is something I am very proud of, and any mistakes are my own mistakes. I’m not angry at anyone else for making the wrong decisions. It’s probably the most proud I’ve been of anything. If I was going to be remembered for something it would be this album. I have something I’m proud of and able to enjoy it.
Not to say that there weren’t enjoyable parts. For example, doing the guitar parts for “Primordial Afterglow” was ridiculously fun. I was in a stupidly fun mood that day. Jack Moffitt was my victim. He was playing the guitar. I told him “I want you to play a wolf whistle”. Playing with these serious indie musicians – they are quite confronted by this idea of being ridiculous. That was fun and excessive. A lot of the drum work on “What Makes a Man Cry” was fun – I enjoyed fleshing it out and making it bombastic with Elliot Hammond from The Delta Riggs. I enjoyed it all, but it felt like pulling teeth sometimes.
The tour is about to kick off tomorrow night in Perth – all ready ?
Yes – it’s the next task. I’m excited. I’ve never played in Perth as a Hayley Mary headline gig. I can’t wait. In the climate a lot of people would tell you not to play Perth and Adelaide due to the expense. But I decided I have to do this for better or worse, else I’ll always beat myself up for not doing it. So Roman XS is having a national tour and I think it will be pretty great.
Who are in your band, The Hurricanes?
It’s a three-piece. Astrid Holtz plays the drums. She has played with me for a long time. And I’ve got this Melbourne-based guitarist called Lakota Vella, who is quite a gun. I had a 6-piece when I started out, but that’s a foolish idea. You’ve got to make the decision of whether you want to tour or not. It’s going to be fun. I wasn’t planning on an all-girl band, but that’s how it’s worked out.
HAYLEY MARY ROMAN XS ALBUM TOUR
Friday 25 October – Old Habits, Perth
Saturday 26 October – Grace Emily Hotel, Adelaide
Friday 1 November – Waywards, Sydney
Saturday 2 November – Black Bear Lodge Brisbane
Friday 29 November – Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
Tickets on sale at hayleymary.com
Roman XS from Hayley Mary is out now – grab a copy HERE (vinyl available!)
