HAYLEY MARY
Roman XS (self released/MGM)
AFTER STORMING THE BATTLEMENTS with her two post-Jezabels EPs, especially The Drip – the 2021 mini-album that, marvellously, never knowingly underplayed its dramas, its sonic peaks, or missed an opportunity to go big – Hayley Mary has toned it down for what is officially album number one.
Well, toned it down part of the way: there is less of the happily bombastic but we’re not talking about some acoustic, singer/songwriter greyness here; no one in these songs is short of strong feelings; big moments keep happening.
Millionaire, for example, climaxes with piano and guitars dancing with each other like friendly combatants about to become lovers, and the grand synthesisers and rat-a-tat drums in Eighteen make the programmed-strings seem modest. And that’s before she drops in the nod to Dead Or Alive’s You Spin Me Round, a record about as small as Pete Burns’ hair and makeup.
That song reference by Hayley Mary is neither accidental nor inconsequential, at least in terms of period-dating the foundations for XS. If the previous records often drew from Phil Spector and Jim Steinman/Meat Loaf, Blondie and Divinyls, this time around the instrumental and production choices suggest a definite turn to the 1980s.
So from Hayley and co-producer Lachlan Mitchell there are synthesisers and crisp drums, emphasised electric pianos and shiny shiny surfaces to the vocals, drop-in sampled voices and guitars tweaked to sound vaguely electronic. Dance rhythms suggest arms swinging left and right under lopsided haircuts, or, in Millionaire, Kevin Bacon crossing over to a Demi Moore film. And emotions can sometimes vibrate with a teen intensity, as The Lonely One just seems to get bigger the closer you get to it, until it is its own universe.
There are lyrical images like the opening filmclip-ready couplet from One Last Drag “In the dark wind on the balcony/Like you were the only one/Who was against the world/You were the only one with a cigarette”, and, from Primordial Afterglow, a rom-com scene’s “I want your number, I want you to want mine/I’m in your shadow, I wanna be in your light/I want your memories and I want all your dreams”.
If MTV didn’t exist it would have to be created to house all this.
Another side of the ‘80s, the bright guitar pop of, say, Altered Images, gets a look in as well. Beyond Primordial Afterglow’s buoyant, brassy pleasures, The Ballad Of Ruby Wednesday (where her partner and occasional cowriter, Johnny Took joins the production desk) practically shimmers, deflecting in light to its lyrical shadows, Blunt (written with the sadly recently departed Jack Colwell) circles its melody like a smitten lover, while Eris makes acoustic guitars the base for a ballad that sends wavering electric ahead to delicately light the way.
There is an extended version of this album with two extra songs, to be released mid-November, and I reckon it’s worth holding off for. George is a tremulous creation of an alternative universe Kim Carnes singing with The Cure, and Sorrow The Rapture is almost giddy, its cascading guitar pop topped by vocal flourishes in various shades. Their addition takes a good, consistent album up a level, and over the top – rather than through - those battlements. Nicely done.
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