The Jezabels + Benjamin Francis Leftwich @ Divan Orange

Less than six months after their last North American sortie, four-piece Sydney, Australia practitioners in artsy, self-dubbed “intensindie” pop-rock, The Jezabels, were back in Montreal. This time, however, they were headlining their own shows across Canada and the US. It would appear that after garnering a broad following in Australia, The Jezabels are gunning for an international audience—and apparently, it’s working. Their show at Divan Orange was sold out (on a Tuesday, no less), and they’ll be back for a third round in less than a year at Osheaga in August.

It was questionable whether or not such an intimate venue was going to be suitable for a band with such a big sound, buttressed by singer Hayley Mary’s soaring vocals, that are used to playing much larger concert halls—at least in their homeland. Yet it worked out eminently well, allowing the band to create a wall of sound, enveloping the small crowd in a combination of booming vocals and rollicking drums topped off with ambient guitar parts skilfully merged into Heather Shannon’s keyboard harmonies.

The only real problem with the show was actually the support act. British singer Benjamin Francis Leftwich, yet another acoustic guitar-strumming folk act, was not overly attention-grabbing, and, judging by the audience reaction, was pretty “talk-overable.” His mellow ballads with lyrics focused upon all the standard topics (“love lost,” “life’s lessons learned,” etc.) were sufficiently pleasant and inoffensive but, frankly, not particularly interesting or original. The vast stylistic differences between Leftwich and The Jezabels surely didn’t help.

Once The Jezabels took the stage, it was smooth sailing; they launched into “Endless Summer,” the first single from their debut album, Prisoner, with gusto—a solid choice for grabbing audience attention and for avoiding insipidly “easing into” the set with slower, duller numbers. Although during their opening songs, Mary appeared to be having gripes with her audio tech, these very minor sound mixing dramas were ironed out swiftly, visibly allowing Mary to settle more comfortably into her onstage persona. What onstage persona would that be? That of a dancer whose specialty styleinvolves frequently limb flailing, and that appears aimed at keeping her perfectly symmetrical fringe out of her eyes. Despite that heinous description, her slightly-possessed attitude was bizarrely endearing.

While the entire set was consistent and had no inherently weak points, it improved towards the middle as the band shifted towards performing more songs off their earlier EPs. The decision to not just stick predominantly to playing newer tracks from Prisoner was wise—The Jezabels’ classics (if you will) felt more polished and offered the evening’s highlights.

“Mace Spray” was an adeptly layered performance that carefully added on layers of volume. The combination of drummer Nik Kaloper, shifting from rhythmic toms to a brilliantly loud incorporation of the whole kit, with Mary’s progressively more hysterical vocals engulfed the venue in a glorious wave of sound.

Later on, “Easy to Love,” one of the group’s earliest singles, gave further proof that The Jezabels truly function as one cohesive band, with powerful keyboard chords musically tying everything together into a moment of musical jouissance.

A nice final touch to the show was The Jezabels’ refusal to engage with the overdone convention of leaving-and-coming-back for an encore (not that Divan Orange’s stage set-up really facilitates this); instead, they just lurked onstage, waiting for a time check, and then added on an extra couple of numbers, “Sahara Mahala” and “Dark Storm” which gave an ambient and slightly more mellow send-off to an hour of emotively executed music from a highly promising band.

-Tim Forster