Well,
interviewing Jale was easy enough. Heard they were comin'
to town, made the appropriate phone calls, and they were waiting
for me when I showed up at the Press Club one chilly friday
night in January. Writing a story on the all-female quartet
has turned out to be, well... another story. As I write this
I am locked out of my apartment, sitting outside of a "hip"
suburban cafe' with my deadline looming large. On my right
is an obnoxious group of "goth" kids casually smoking their
clove cigarettes and making sure everyone present notices.
The token effeminate male is making an extra effort by making
a helluva lot of noise with the dog chain that I am presuming
goes around his neck. On my left, an RX-7 is spewing exhaust
into my cup of mama's boy coffee. Not the stuff great literary
inspirations are made from, but it's not like I have a choice
at this point.
For most
bands, it usually takes a few years and a few records to land
a home at even a decent indy label. For Jale, it took all
of three months. That's three months after they picked up
instruments, not three months after they started playing together.
They literally just decided to start a band, figured out who
would play what, and started writing songs.
"We made
Alyson play drums, which was a really good idea (laughter)...and
Laura used to play keyboards, which is really funny because
there was another woman in the band at first, we were Tag
for a couple months and then she left and so Laura went from
keyboards to bass which is what we wanted in the first place"
explains guitarist Eve Hartling.
"We (Alyson
and Laura) went over to their (Eve and guitarist Jennifer
Pierce) living room with corn shakers and stuff, anything
you could bang on. And then these friends of ours, this band
called Sloan, were like `You guys can open for us in two weeks
if you can get it together. You can come into our space and
use our instruments'. We have a video of it , Eve had a guitar
on and she wasn't even playing it! It was sooo funny!"
Sound
familiar? Yeah, right.
Jale
is a rarity among all-female bands these days because they
belie the inclination to sound like a variation on the Go-Go's
or L-7 (not that sounding like either of those bands is a
bad thing). These Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) girls, er...women,
write songs that are sweet, but not sickening, moody or morose.
Their debut, Dreamcake (SubPop), is proof positive of this.
From the opening cut "Not Happy" to "The Unseen Guest" to
"Emma", the women of Jale carve their initials deep into the
tree of female rock (speaking of initials, can anyone guess
how they got their name?). If you're into chick rock like
I am, you gotta check out Jale. And I gotta go, the "goth"
kids have split and that can only mean one thing - this place
is closed.
Well,
interviewing Jale was easy enough. Heard they were comin'
to town, made the appropriate phone calls, and they were waiting
for me when I showed up at the Press Club one chilly friday
night in January. Writing a story on the all-female quartet
has turned out to be, well... another story. As I write this
I am locked out of my apartment, sitting outside of a "hip"
suburban cafe' with my deadline looming large. On my right
is an obnoxious group of "goth" kids casually smoking their
clove cigarettes and making sure everyone present notices.
The token effeminate male is making an extra effort by making
a helluva lot of noise with the dog chain that I am presuming
goes around his neck. On my left, an RX-7 is spewing exhaust
into my cup of mama's boy coffee. Not the stuff great literary
inspirations are made from, but it's not like I have a choice
at this point.