10 Minutes with The Jezabels

Following world tours, their ARIA Award, and their hit singles, Sydney’s indie favourites The Jezabels return home for a two-night performance at the iconic Opera House and Groovin the Moo shows. Outinsydney have a chat to drummer Nik Kaloper, to talk albums, touring and his favourite hang out spots around town.

Welcome Nik! Are you looking forward to being back in Sydney?

Yeah thank you! We’ve been in so many different places and in London at the moment. So coming home will be nice.

So you've been based in London whilst you’ve been touring?

Well, we’ve already toured Europe this year and before that we had Laneway festival, so we haven’t really been based in London, we’ve basically been living out of suitcases.

We heard The Jezabels met during your years at Sydney University, how did you all meet?

Well basically, Hayley, Sam and Heather sort of knew of each other because they had all come down from Byron Bay at different points to go to Sydney Uni. They weren’t in the same social circles but still knew of each other. They reconnected at Uni and started playing music together. I had no idea who any of them were, but I worked down at the coffee shop at the bottom of the Manning Building, and then one at the bottom of the Wentworth Building for a while. Sam became a regular and mentioned they were looking for a drummer, so I told him I was a drummer and that we should have a jam. We had a couple of practices and entered the Sydney Uni band comp and I guess the rest is what they call history.

The Jezabels have been labeled one of Australia’s biggest indie exports, are you loving that Australian acts are having such a big influence around the world at the moment.

Absolutely, not that I’m not slightly flattered by that label but Australians are exporting a lot of great music at the moment. All over the world Australian bands are getting a lot of recognition, every so often in Europe we meet people like Germans or French people who stream triple j because they think it’s a really good source of new independent music. All over the world people are paying attention to the bands that come out of it.

All your album covers over the years have quite distinctive artwork, your new album ‘Brink’ is quite magnificent as well, who’s the artist behind this work?

Since the very first EP we realised we were going to have trouble expressing ourselves visually, I don’t think we were those types of people. So Christopher Doyle, who is our art director, has done an incredible job at capturing what we’re trying to say visually for our album art. The first three EP’s were photos he’d taken, he worked with a photographer for Prisoner, and for the last one he actually found a Polish painter Pucvel, and we purchased the rights to use 6 of his paintings which are really awesome, top notch stuff. How good is our album cover! (Laughs)

When it comes to making an album, you hear of a lot of artists/bands that lock themselves in a secluded environment to write, whilst others see it more as a natural day to day process. How did you guys go about writing the new album Brink?

For this album we sort of did the whole lock ourselves in our room approach. We blocked out some rehearsal studios across London and other places over about seven to eight months, we wanted to write this album as a band before we started to record. Sometimes we’d write in pairs, other times by ourselves, or all four of us together, we tried to change it up so it didn’t become to monotonous. Some days were really draining, uninspiring and difficult, and then by the end of the week you might feel like you nailed an idea for a song. So it was a pretty long drawn out process but we definitely made it the focus of our lives.

Do you have a favourite track on the album?

It would be the last one on the album ‘All You Need’, for two reasons, one is I really like how Hayley’s optimistic lyrics are backed by sad music, you know that sad-happy feeling at the same time?  Also when we were writing that song one of the rehearsal studios was in arch way beneath an abandoned train line in the north of London, it was snowing and I remember taking a break and walking outside and there was this very serene quiet sort of snow fall and it was a nice moment for me. That song reminds me of that moment.

What’s your favourite Australian festival to play at?

Splendour In The Grass is always a fun one, but Laneway this year was an incredible amount of fun. The lineup was clever for the lack of a better word, it was the perfect mix of bands and I loved how many of them had a lot of females in the lineup.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a female heavy lineup in my entire life. But it didn’t seem forced at the same time because those were a lot of great bands.

What does it feel like to know you’ll be playing at Sydney’s iconic Oprah House?

Daunting in one word!

Do you think you’ll be playing a different kind of set?

I can’t give any secrets away can I!

When you’re back in Sydney what are some of your favourite things to do around town?

When I lived in Sydney I lived near Vic On The Park in Enmore, it’s funny because when I lived there it used to be one of the crappiest pubs in Sydney, now its actually a really nice place to hang out, they’ve done a good job.  Of course as soon as I leave the country they make it this incredible place! There is also a new café on Enmore Road called Evolution Foods, I’m not a big vegan or raw foodist or anything but I love that kind of food…they just give you big bowls of heaps of different things that you can eat really quickly and it’s just awesome. Before that I used to live in Asquith, and I used to take a river cat from Meadowbank station to the city for 5 bucks and if you caught it when it wasn’t busy it was quite peaceful.

Thank you so much for your time, we hope all goes well for you guys with the new album and good luck for Groovin the Moo and the Opera House gigs.

Thank you, definitely will do a shout out to you (laughs).

By Carla Pavez