STACK #136 Feb 2016

FEATURE MUSIC

MUSIC

has a few ideas on why that might be. “I think a lot of it happens in the bedroom, or in the privacy of the home, to be honest,” she says. “A lot of men have come on board because their wives or partners or sister or mothers have gradually convinced them. It was a lonely place being a feminist even two or three years ago, and now you’re not really cool if you’re not one. Which I like!” She speaks about Taylor Swift and Emma Watson, and then ponders that maybe the attitude shift has to do with the internet and more people reading personal accounts. “The history of feminism is very unique because a lot of it happens internally,” she says. “It’s never going to be that big tangible metanarrative that we’re so used to. It was always untellable, but now we’ve got more technology and more mediums and outlets to tell the little stories.” “Every ‘ism’, every movement towards acceptance is slowly gaining ground. There’s been a coming of understanding. It just seems part of our evolution

The track titled Stamina seems to stand out as a thematic touchstone – and Hayley Mary is happy to talk about it, even though she “actually went into this album not wanting to talk about the songs.” There’s a part in which the lyrics are structured around binaries – “It ain’t X, because X is Y” – and the vocalist explains that it’s her take on the American/Australian dream. “You know the ‘new world’ nuclear family where you get a house, and you get a husband, and you get love in a romantic and socially acceptable way, and you just hide away in that construct, and that’s forever,” she says. “I just felt really suffocated by the notion of it. None of that really makes you happy, those socially constructed aspirations. I did use to aspire to them; then in my personal life I went through a period that broke them all down and I just realised I don’t really want to be in one place, I don’t really want one man or one woman. I like embracing the uncertainty of travelling and being a bit nomadic and not searching for that thing at the end of the rainbow. The rainbow’s more interesting than the thing at the end of it. There’s heaps of colours in the rainbow,” she laughs. “In that song when I go ‘One thing, one thing,” it’s like the ‘one thing’ that I’m

One love? That to me is just crazy in a planet of seven billion people

acknowledging is just to keep going – which is stamina, obviously. Like one love? That to me is just crazy in a planet of seven billion people. I think it puts a lot of pressure on people! Particularly women of my age. I can only speak from personal experience but if they don’t have their boyfriend or their husband which they aspire to have a child with and buy a house with and get into a lifetime of debt with, then they’ve failed somehow.” Hayley has alluded to her impression that women’s experiences seem to be being discussed more openly recently, and she

• Synthia by The Jezabels is out February 12 via MGM

that we’ll eventually try and understand each other more and more – that seems to be part of the progress of humanity.”

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