You don’t expect Jarboe to be laid-back, but she is. The former Swan and current metal-head almost lives up to the southern cliché of someone who’s never met a stranger. Almost. But there’s nothing cliché about this restless performer who gives every inch of her frame to her craft, this woman who has devoted her life to torturing herself in song so that at least some portion of her fan base doesn’t have to.

With Jarboe, there is a seemingly endless spiral of mystery: Her raspy laugh is the sound of a woman who’s had a cigarette habit for some time, though during our hour-long conversation, I never hear a cigarette lighter or the telltale draw and exhale. Despite her cutting edge stage persona(s), she’s really pretty ordinary, having made her first communion on time and become the apple of her parents’ eyes. And, for one period of her life, she worked the Holiday Inn circuit as part of a lounge act. And, despite her sometimes venom-loaded lyrics, you get the feeling that, were you ailing, she’d be the first person at your door with a container of chicken noodle soup and a bottle of cold medicine. Maybe.
She is, by her own admission, though not necessarily by her own design, a complex person. “I’ve always been very comfortable onstage,” she says, explaining her ability to seize every opportunity under the lights. “As a person, I’m very reserved and reclusive and kind of shy, almost antisocial in a way, so the only time I feel comfortable (is) when I’m performing. It’s kind of like where you don’t have that stage fright, you don’t feel inhibited. It’s almost like being an exhibitionist: When you don’t feel inhibited when you’re performing, whether it’s in front of a camera or onstage or behind a microphone, but in real life you feel like this awkward geek, you know, like a wallflower.

“ I’m a real split personality,” she continues. “I think that I’m kind of unexciting and reclusive in my private life but then when I’m writing or working on a vocal, then another side of me comes out. I feel actualized then. I feel like all of me is coherent, cohesive, like all my personalities have come together to create a solid personality. Whereas without the performing, I feel kind of half-alive.”