Since winning the 2022 Auckland Live Best Independent Debut Award at the Independent Music NZ (IMNZ) awards – for their album The Licking of a Tangerine – Jazmine Mary has continued to run a sensually sonic bath worth bathing in. Their second album – Dog – was featured in Rolling Stone Australia‘s 25 Best New Zealand Albums of 2023. They have also held their own in the Atomic 2.0 touring show, hailing the pioneering women of rock in the company of many of Aotearoa’s finest.
Memphis, the first single off this – their third – album, hit Number 18 on the Hot 20 Aotearoa Singles Tukutahi Arotini 20 o Aotearoa chart, also checking into the SRN Top 10 Te Teaku o Runga Rerekē (o Aotearoa). Its pacy, countrified vibes are comparatively upbeat, in the context of the rest of the album, which could make it a great gateway drug to the harder stuff. Likewise with the pleasing tempo variations, and bridging layered vocals, of second single My Brilliance.
Jazmine Mary would fit into a True Detective soundtrack like a gun in a holster. There is a restrained, intimate majesty to their music, which makes you feel like you’ve been lured into a private place to have pearls of hard won wisdom trailed all over you. Their vocal pitch is often thrillingly deep, often hushed and confessional, but well-capable of climbing. Title track I Want to Rock and Roll is a slow-burning example, which also highlights an intriguing narrative bent. You want to follow the protagonists of stories like Narcotics Anonymous Meeting to see where they end up.
The songs are served on shimmering beds of strings, softly strummed guitars, moody keys, brushed and delicately rolling drums, and haunting woodwind wails. The vocals often sound like dreaming. Their singer is not averse to jamming on a tasty word or phrase – repeated, repeated, repeated (as in Back of the Bar) – like hard candy being rolled around the tongue, in search of what will soften apparently troubled sentiments.
The torchy June, for a case in point, begins with minimalist piano, joined by strings, and the gentlest drums, which feels like they are soothing the worried lyric. Sometimes the words fall away completely, allowing the voice to be used as its own instrument.
Fans of Reb Fountain (who Jazmine Mary has toured nationally with), Nadia Reid’s weightier stuff, Lera Lynn (for those True Detective – Season 2 vibes), and Lana Del Rey’s sadness, can add an extra blanket to their brooding chests with this album. Its edgy folk vibe is like heading down a metal road on the back of a motorcycle – diving deep into those Red Band and fishnet cover art vibes – half-asleep, arms wrapped around the rider(/singer), focus drifting between the headlamp’s limited glow, and atmospheric darkness; tethered to reality only by the smoky scent from the oil drum fire you spent the night watching faces transform around.
Dangerously delicious, there is a bold heart beating beneath Jazmine Mary’s leather jacket. They treat the tightrope between fragility and menace like a pendulum for straddling, allowing the listener to gladly swing along.
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About the author Bee Trudgeon
Bee Trudgeon (she/her) is a writer, rocker, stroller, strummer, mama, children’s librarian, and perpetual student. Her journalism has been published in Rip It Up, Audioculture Iwi Waiata, Capital Times, The Sapling, The Spinoff, and NZ Poetry Shelf; her poetry in A Fine Line, NZ Poetry Box, and NZ Poetry Shelf, and the New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology paint me. She lives in Cannons Creek, and on the Patreon page of her alter ego, Grace Beaster.
