TRACK BY TRACK: Hayley Mary Transcends Cathartic Pop On 'Roman XS'

Hayley Mary’s debut album Roman XS is a jump into the void. Leaping with arms outspread into the cathartic release of lively, heartfelt, nostalgic music, the album possesses a life of its own.

Brought together by sincere lyricism that marinates on feelings of longing and reminiscence, iconic 80s guitar melodies and drum patterns, gritty dance beats and purifying crooning, Mary’s debut project provides a more intimate introduction to the artist that fans first got to know as the lead vocalist in indie-sleaze Sydney band The Jezabels.

Mary is both the lover girl and the rockstar on Roman XS, toying with a balance of direct, outright charisma and desire-filled yearning. Getting into the project's deep and murky nooks and crannies, Hayley Mary has provided The Music with a track-by-track of Roman XS.

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One Last Drag

This track was actually born out of an instrumental demo my husband Johnny was working on to send to Gwen Stefani. We were in Canberra, quarantining to travel interstate during early covid. He was playing these grimy loops over and over in the makeshift studio we’d set up in the hotel and I was sitting on the balcony drinking wine and chain smoking. To be honest, I was thinking about quitting music as I often do. I just started saying this spoken word idea where cigarettes were a metaphor for anything you want to quit; booze, drugs, food, TikTok, likes, swipes, fame, work, music, life itself... “One last Drag, my life is one last drag...“ It sounds like I’m glorifying smoking, and maybe in a way I am;  it’s definitely cooler than vaping because, at least it’s honest about the death drive, but it’s ultimately a song about all things we know don’t fulfil us, but we’re absolutely hooked on. I just asked Johnny if I could record the poem then and there and he decided to give it to me instead of sending it to Gwen. We tried to redo the vocal in a proper studio later, but it didn't have the same vibe, so we kept the demo vocal in there. And now here I am taking one more drag of the music industry cigarette in releasing it to you. And you might say in that context well, maybe keeping going is good. Maybe the quitters among us don’t ‘make it’, but you might also say, ‘make it where? Maybe we’re already there?

Millionaire

This started as a success-is-the-best-revenge story,  but then somehow got a bit more complicated. There’s this idea I read once, I don’t know where, that repressed or rejected sexual desire can fuel great success if channelled into something else, like a mission or a career. I don’t doubt that. I think a lot of people are trying to get success or wealth because we didn't get something else we wanted or needed.

The Lonely One

This is a fun one. My friend Lewi Stephenson and I wrote it at a house party while everyone else was on the dance floor. It’s probably the poppiest song I’ve ever done because he has an amazing pop sensibility. I love pop. I’m just not that capable of keeping things simple and direct on my own, as you may note when reading through the other track descriptions. 

He had the original demo idea and it just reminded me of early The Killers records, and a sense of bitter-sweetness, like when a love affair is ending and you’re driving away through the desert to a new era of your life. So that informed the rest of the lyrics and vibe as we fleshed it out. 

Some Rainbows

I was moving house recently when I found a box of high school memorabilia with a phonebook full of names and numbers from Byron Bay High School, where I graduated 20 years ago. I know women are supposed to pretend to be younger than they are to stay relevant in music, but I’m beyond caring; I grew up in a time where we still had physical phone books and I feel bloody lucky for that. 

Anyways, I glanced at the name of a friend of mine who’d sadly passed away at the end of school, who I hadn’t thought of in a while, and memories of him and that time came flooding back. I wrote the song with an acoustic sitting on a cardboard box in my almost empty apartment. It’s about him and some others we lost too young, but also  growing up in that town, the changes it’s seen and some other friends we also lost far too young along the way. It’s also a reflection on how life has gone for the rest of us since then. The song felt like it wrote itself a bit to be honest. It’s very special to me.

The Ballad Of Ruby Wednesday 

I used to hang out with a bunch of rock bands in London a while back who all thought they were very cool and some of them were. They had these seventies-style groupies that would hang around, and one in particular was called Ruby. She was somewhat ignored by most of the guys on an intellectual level, but she seemed to really love and ‘get’ the music the most. She reminded me of a wonderfully positive inversion of the tragic ‘Ruby Tuesday’ story of a lost girl hanging out with bands, always changing her name and identity. So I called her Ruby Wednesday because she had a future, and it was meaningful.

What Makes A Man Cry?

This is the first co-write I did with Lewi. Again we were at a party and he showed me the demo with him singing. The song was amazing, but to me, it just sounded like a power ballad that should be sung by some 80-style female diva. I told him this and we went on our merry ways. He must have had a big night because next time we were out he came up to me and said, “Hey I’ve got an idea for this song called ‘What Makes A Man Cry?’ and I think it would be good for you to sing. Maybe we can try you singing on it and if you like it we can finish writing it together.” I didn't tell him that he’d shown me and I was already in love with the demo. We just went in and recorded the verses and choruses. It sounded sick, but I felt it was actually a bit too ‘soft, so I wrote an extra part for the post chorus that had a bit of anger and gusto. I love this track so much. It’s bordering on histrionic, for a song meant to speak to the male inability to express feelings, I think a bit of hyper-feminine melodrama makes complete sense. Shout out to Elliott Hammond of The Delta Riggs who drummed on this album. He and Lachlan Mitchell (the executive producer) had a lot of fun doing some pretty OTT tom work on this which I find incredible and emotive.

Primordial Afterglow

God this is a weird song. I’ll try to explain what it’s about without writing an essay. In a word maybe it’s ‘resentment’. Sometimes it feels like we might be better off focusing more on what we have than what others have. We’re so focused on our subjective truths and dismantling of the past and other people's power we forget that the biggest privilege, and the objective truth, is that we're here alive now for a short time. I’m done with that kind of must-destroy-the-patriarchy mentality. It sucks you dry. I have a life now and I will attempt to enjoy the rest of it. 

Shout out to Jack Moffit, formerly of The Preatures, who I think wanted to crawl under a rock with some of the ridiculous things I made him play on guitar on this. I wanted it to be fun and sexy and classy Violent Femmesy rock song and I think he’s nailed that. Also shout out Sarah Mcleod of The Superjesus for shooting the impromptu music video on her phone when we were having a few drinks at The Palace Hotel in Broken Hill. Now there’s a gal that knows how to live in the moment and get shit done!

Blunt

I had the honour of writing this song with the late Jack Colwell, whose recent passing was a tragic loss to the music community. We got together during lockdown on some zoom sessions to write for my album and he said, “I’ve been thinking about you, Hayley and the word that keeps coming to mind is ‘blunt’. I think we should write a song called ‘blunt’ for you.” It’s a strange mix of nihilism and optimism, which pretty much sums me up as well as the word ‘blunt’ does. But it’s just an example of the creative and authentic way in which he always approached things. I know COVID really took the sails out of him in terms of momentum for his music and we reflected on that a bit, this idea of stopping the world living to try and achieve zero deaths comes into the song. Jack was someone who had a lot of energy and, when channelled well it was beautiful. I feel really lucky to have some of that magic in this album. Just sad we won't get to finish some of our other ideas together.

Eighteen

I am very infatuated with the idea of nostalgia. I change my mind often on the whole phenomenon and whether it’s good or bad or neither. It's quite tragic to idealise the past, forgetting what was bad about it and missing out on the present, but it’s also unwise and ungrateful to forget or attempt to obliterate the past and what was good about it and everything it gave to us. 

This particular song was sparked by catching myself in a moment of nostalgia for high school when an old song from that time on the radio. But the catch was in my mid 20s in my prime, driving a Ford Mustang convertible from LA to Vegas, and for all intents and purposes, I was living out my childhood dreams, so it was almost deranged to be wanting to be back at eighteen. This idea that no matter if you're young or old, you might just be dreaming of being the opposite struck me as quite gothic, that we are in some ways ghosts of ourselves when we are not in the moment. I wanted to capture that ghostly feeling in a song. The idea of constantly turning one’s head backwards and forwards ended up in my interpolation of the Dead or Alive song, ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’, which comes in toward the end. I was very lucky they were happy to let me use it. It’s such an iconic track and the perfect reference for the feeling I was trying to get across. 

Eris 

This song was written when I felt like my world had fallen apart and chaos was taking over a bit. I’d just found out that my band The Jezabels had to cancel our world tour due to the serious illness of Heather, our keyboardist, which was scary for more reasons than one. It was also the day that David Bowie died, which devastated me. I had given up my flat in London to go on tour, but now had no ticket or income or place to go, so I moved into a hostel above a pub called The Hootenanny in Brixton. The streets were filled with crowds and murals celebrating and mourning Bowie. There was a very shit nylon string guitar in the lounge at the hostel and I stole a moment where I thought the other guests were out to demo this idea. It was about Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, who the other gods had expelled from the heavens because she was a bit of a nightmare. It felt in that moment in my life and the world around me that Eris was knocking on the door, demanding to be remembered. I suppose it sparked me going out on my own as a musician, so thank you Eris, I guess. 

Hayley Mary’s Roman XS is out now on all streaming platforms.

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 here.