SATURDAY, 14TH JUNE 2025

Jazmine Mary finds light in the gaps with 'I Want to Rock and Roll'

Jazmine Mary’s third studio album, I Want to Rock and Roll, isn’t quite the riot its title might suggest—but it is a release of another kind. Out now via Flying Nun, the record is an emotionally charged, genre-warping collection from one of Aotearoa’s most quietly adventurous voices.

Written in the rare moments of relief after a stretch of personal devastation, Mary’s new songs feel like flickers of light under a door. “You’re in complete darkness, but you can see the light on in the kitchen,” they say of the feeling that shaped the album—and that metaphor hums beneath each track.

The follow-up to 2023’s Dog (named one of Rolling Stone Australia’s best NZ albums of the year), I Want to Rock and Roll is more refined but no less raw. Engineered by De Stevens at Roundhead Studios, it features a stellar cast of collaborators—Dave Khan, Louisa Nicklin, Arahi, Womb’s Cello Forrester, and Cass Basil—all in service of Mary’s shifting emotional landscapes.

Lead singles Memphis and My Brilliance already found traction on alt and student airwaves, and the full album delivers on their promise. It’s at once hopeful and haunted, folk-rooted but unafraid to stretch into darker, more surreal corners.

Mary—who has performed globally and supported the likes of Kurt Vile and Billy Bragg—has long danced between vulnerability and performance art. Here, they sound more grounded than ever. “It’s like, in a conversation—you know what to say when you know who you are,” they explain.

For longtime fans, I Want to Rock and Roll offers Mary’s signature mix of the tender and the strange. For newcomers, it’s a generous place to start—an album about making peace with who you are, one moment of clarity at a time.