Good Harlots

Like many Australians relocating to the UK, The Jezabels’ Hayley Mary was rather starry eyed about the mother country. The reality of life in Blighty was, she soon discovered, quite different. She found London to be grey, grim and dismissive of out-of-towners – eager-to-be-liked Antipodeons in particular.

None of this was a tragedy in itself – Mary (real name Hayley McGlone ) is of the opinion even an unhappy experience is worthwhile in that it helps you grow as a person. The problem was The Jezabels had moved to Britain to write their second album, believing a change of scenery would provide the necessary inspiration. All they got was drizzle, traffic and rude Londoners. She sighs. It was an unhappy time.

“London is a much colder, darker city than Sydney,” she rues. “There was a cultural change. Music in my opinion is very much to do with space. You have to have a familiarity with where you are, the places you walk every day. London didn’t provide that – not at first at any rate.

“It’s hard to be taken seriously if you come from Australia. London is a snobby place when it comes to culture.”

Coming off two and half years of touring debut album Prisoner – a hit twice over, first in Australia, then the rest of the world – the odds were against The Jezabels to begin with. They'd pushed themselves promoting Prisoner, spending at least six months longer on the road than they really ought to have. To go straight from so punishing a schedule to the studio – in a strange, not very agreeable city – was too much, says Hayley.

“At the start of the process we wondered would there be a record. Mentally and physically we were a bit screwed from all the touring. It caught up with us in a ‘reality check’ sort of way. We hit some pretty low points. In the end we came through. It was tough, though.”

Hayley is friendly, if a bit tightly wound. She’s pale with big expressive eyes and a toothy smile. In press shots, she can come across as preening, a bit imperious. But that’s not at all how she seems in person – there's less of the indie rock Dannii Minogue you perhaps expected, and more of the frail artist wondering if this is even the life they want to lead.

Ironically, the oppressiveness that initially turned them off Britain proved a major influence on the album they torturously put together, The Brink. Broadening her canvass of subject matter, Mary tackles many of the issues inimical to the surveillance society we live in , where CCTV cameras glower on every street and you never know who might be snooping on your tweets and email.

“The UK, especially, is quite Orwellian,” says Hayley. “All the shit you read in books actually happens there. You can’t ignore the news, which I think you can in Australia. You have a lot of migrants from places that are really war-torn. And the class system is really prevalent."

Just like Downton Abbey, observes Hot Press. “Well yeah, but I don’t think Downton Abbey is exactly critical of class. The good guy is the lord – the class system works for everyone, until the war comes and ruins it.”

The biggest difference second time around, she says, was a knowledge that the world was watching. The Jezabels' self-released their first album in Australia. Now they were working with a record label, which meant outsiders expected to hear work in progress and they were required to have lots of long boring discussions about artwork , potential singles and so forth.

“It wasn’t as terrifying as it sounds,” says Hayley. “We let people comment for the first time. It was a new experience for us. It was actually very nice.”Hayley laughs when it's put to her that her hometown, the surfing resort of Byron Bay, sounds like a real-life version of Summer Bay from Home And Away.

“It does have a hippy culture,” she notes. "Smalltown Australia can be a cut off place The country is a paradise in a way – as long as you're a white person, though conservatives are doing their best to ruin it. Where I grew up was slightly atypical, in so far that it was relatively open-minded. But it’s still very different from the UK. You come to London and you think wow, 'Life is hectic’. There’s so much going on. You just can’t ignore the world here.”

The Brink is out now.