Jezabels

Jezabels Sydney four-piece The Jezabels are on the road again. Exhausted from the night before, but riding high on their ever growing success, rhythm guitarist Sam Lockwood admits to BBM’s Jeremy Williams that he finds it “strange, the minute you get talked about, there is all this hype.”

Jezabels With the release of their third EP, Dark Storm, within an 18 month period The Jezabels have been putting in the hard slog and have been duly rewarded with praise from critics and radio play, notably for the single Hurt Me. However, Lockwood admits “We didn’t really notice it until recently, I guess, it is hard to notice that stuff in the real world.”

Clearly wishing to ignore the growing pressure that comes with success, The Jezabels are happily working away at what they do best, “pop rock with a female vocalist.” The formula is easy enough but many have failed. Yet this group formed at Sydney University seem to have struck a chord with the hearts of a nation.  However, it could have all so easily gone wrong. Childhood friends Hayley Mary and Heather Shannon moved together from Byron Bay to Sydney for university. Sam recalls “It is a funny story, Hayley I knew from Byron. I knew Heather too, I remember meeting her but she doesn’t remember meeting me, which is fine. Nick, I met him at uni and he was playing something, I liked the song he was playing. That was a good way to meet, through music. We got drunk together one night, then Hayley and I showed him some songs really drunkenly. We thought we’d never see him again. I think he saw our worst at the start, so it’s been quite smooth from then on.”

With Dark Storm proving a cross-between The National and Florence & The Machine, Sam suggests a listen to “Sahara Mahala”, as “there is just a moment in the third verse, where Hayley and Heather do this vocal harmony thing. When I heard that, after it had been mastered, I was like ‘wow, that sounds like an actual band’.”

The Jezabels play The Hot Barbeque on January 22, Laneway Festival on February 4 and the Adelaide Uni O-Ball on February 26.