Jazmine Mary drops like a spell into the otherwise empty set of their video Seagull, before turning to the camera with a look that asks "what do you make of this?".
It’s a good question, given the folk singer has opted for goth glam stylings and moments later is supported in an almost obstetric recline by two buff young men in matching white boxers.
Mary is happy for you to answer as you like. Encourages it even.
"It is funny to limit ourselves and our identity at all," they say. "And the whole fun thing about art is you can step into these things fully and be these parts of yourselves for a moment."
They themselves have 90 identities, they reckon.
So, despite Seagull’s lullaby pace, Mary channelling to varying degrees Marlene Dietrich and Nico via Jesse Sykes, Aldous Harding and Lana Del Rey, there’s apparently a part of the singer-songwriter that’s at least a little bit Charli XCX.
"I feel like there is this really interesting thing where, you know, maybe a video like that — that is perceived as using sex or that kind of thing — is usually restricted to pop music or hip hop. Folk music we usually see someone standing in a field or by the ocean and that is really boring to me."
Not that oceans are boring. Mary lives close to saltwater in Parau, a relatively quiet corner west of Auckland’s main bustle, and rates that proximity as a big plus. It’s authentically folky, suburban-lite.
Seagull is off Mary’s new album Dog, which they are touring this month, including a gig at Dunedin venue Yours on Friday — where the new record will dominate the set list.
"I haven’t had the opportunity to play a full body of work yet, ... so probably playing the full record, yeah," they say.
Originally from rural Australia but now safely ensconced in Te Ika-a-Māui, Mary picked up an Auckland Live Best Independent Debut award last year on the back of their first album, The Licking of a Tangerine, and in recent times has been filling some prize support spots for Kurt Vile, Billy Bragg, Gang Of Youths and Reb Fountain.
Playing with Bragg was cool.
"That was really exciting for me because I just care really deeply about activism and so does he and he’s a great person.
"And it was also really nice to meet someone that performs as a great person, as their identity, and then you meet them and they actually are.
"Quite a relief."
That commitment to political activity is not explicit in Mary’s songs, lyrically, but is implicit in the act of writing and performing them, they say.
"I think the choice to be hopeful and the choice to practise art in this world is activism ... I do a lot of activism in my life but I wouldn’t connect it to these songs. Other than that, I do think that practising your life in a loving and hopeful way is activism."
Whether in a video or the songs that prompt them, Mary says what they are trying to do is express something, be understood, get closer to understanding.
"So any of the music, that is what it is doing, reaching out for connection."
That’s integral to the songs, the penning of which is less an intellectual exercise than an expression of feeling.
"I tend not to think about it a lot really until after, if I am honest. I act really, really, I think, callously and emotionally and get it all out. And write the music.
"And once it is there I start to have some thoughts about how I can support it with arrangements and production and things like that. But even then, really trying to act with feeling first is really how that works for me."
Which perhaps connects back to that video, in which the two muscle-bound young men play sweetly against type.
"I think that video is quite emotionally provocative. I think it is really tender and it is really beautiful," Mary says.
"I didn’t realise it was going to be so tender."
The gig
- Jazmine Mary plays Yours, Moray Pl, Dunedin, on Thursday, July 20.
