Jazmine Mary opens up about grief, queer identity, and finding light in the liminal.
There’s a certain electricity that hums through I Want to Rock and Roll, the third studio album from noir-folk visionary Jazmine Mary. It’s an album forged from grief, pulsing with hope, and framed by a queerness that is both defiant and deeply personal. For Mary, whose work often teeters on the edge of the surreal, the release feels like a kind of reckoning — with the self, with the world, and with what it means to create from the shadows toward the light.
“I feel my queer experience is existing in a liminal space,” Jazmine explains, speaking from Tāmaki Makaurau, where most of the album was recorded at Roundhead Studios. “Being forced outside of constructs — there’s something really hopeful in that, even if it’s isolating at times. It’s impossible for that duality not to be expressed in the music I make.”
That duality — haunting and hopeful, fierce yet vulnerable — runs like a current through the 8-track collection. From the celestial ache of Memphis to the full-bodied exhalation of the title track, I Want to Rock and Roll is as sonically lush as it is emotionally raw. Featuring long-time collaborators like Louisa Nicklin, Cass Basil, and Cello Forrester, the album feels expansive yet intimate, as though you’ve stumbled into Mary’s dreamscape — and been invited to stay a while.
“It’s an invitation to see,” they say of their live show, which hits Aotearoa stages this winter in celebration of the album’s release on 13 June. “I like to create a world I can disappear into — selfishly — but also where the audience becomes part of the process. Things shift. Things open.”
It’s that openness — to feeling, to form, to failure — that defines not just this latest work but Mary’s trajectory as an artist. Since arriving in Aotearoa from Australia, they’ve carved a singular path through the indie-folk landscape, one that’s earned them a devoted cult following, the Taite Music Prize for Best Independent Debut (The Licking of a Tangerine), and a place on Rolling Stone Australia’s Best NZ Albums of 2023 list for their sophomore album Dog. Along the way, they’ve supported giants like Billy Bragg and Kurt Vile, and become a beloved presence in the underground music scene at home and abroad.
But ask Jazmine Mary how it feels to be part of the current musical landscape in Aotearoa, and they’re quietly surprised. “I hadn’t considered that, actually,” they say. “That’s a really nice thought. Especially being from Australia, to have grown my musical identity here and to feel so supported.”
That support is significant, especially as Mary pushes against assumptions about what queer music sounds like. “There’s this big shift away from the idea that queer music is just pop or dance,” they note. “Those are massive and important spaces, but queer identities are unique and everywhere. It’s nice to feel there’s more nuance, more space for different kinds of expression.”
Mary’s own expression is rooted in the emotionally rich terrain of “writing in moments of relief.” They describe the album’s genesis as a chaotic, tangled process, steeped in heartbreak, curiosity, and confusion. “It was the desire to explode everything and then, in those brief manic moments where everything is beautiful, to write. Quick — now write a song.”
Yet even in those moments of beauty, the process isn’t without cost. “I’m constantly learning how to protect creativity and self in a world that demands so much,” they reflect. “But ultimately, creative impulse is the thing that protects me when things are heavy.”
It’s a heavy world, after all — one that Mary has traversed across continents. Their art has taken them from MONA in Tasmania to Bangkok’s Arts & Cultural Centre, and a residency France. Those experiences, particularly in places where artistic expression is policed or punished, have deepened their appreciation for the freedoms afforded in Aotearoa. “I left Thailand realising that for the most part I can do whatever I want with very gentle consequence. So I best do some good shit.”
That ethos flows through I Want to Rock and Roll — a record as tender as it is powerful. Jazmine Mary might be known for their melancholic mysticism, but they’re also funny, erotic, and a little bit off-putting in the best possible way. And with this new album, they’re learning to “own the value of creating” and to be unafraid of wanting more, or changing their mind.
“I’ve learnt I have time,” they say. “No one is watching as closely as me. It is enough to make something, and make something again — forever.”
It’s a fitting sentiment for NZ Music Month — a reminder that the most powerful stories aren’t always the loudest, but the ones that echo in the space between. That liminal light where Jazmine Mary has always existed.
Jazmine Mary’s new album I Want to Rock and Roll is out Friday 13 June. Visit undertheradar.co.nz for national tour dates, and follow them on Instagram @jazmine__mary
Photos | Jim Tannock.
