Interview: Wolf Alice

Wolf Alice first featured as cover stars of Songwriting Magazine Summer 2015

As their debut album was about to land in 2015, we caught up with the UK’s hotly tipped rock outfit

London alt-rock quartet Wolf Alice are a band whose name you should know by now, such has been their meteoric rise over the past two years. Having grown out of a more delicate duo of the same name, it wasn’t until drummer Joel Amey and bassist Theo Ellis joined guitarist Joff Oddie and singer/guitarist Ellie Rowsell that Wolf Alice began in earnest.

After releasing just a handful of songs and a superb EP – 2013’s Blush – the band were named 2013’s most blogged act. That was followed in 2014 by the Creature Songs EP – whose opening track Moaning Lisa Smile featured on HBO’s Solace For Tired Feet – and by their being named Best Breakthrough Artist at the UK Festival Awards. It’s fair to say, then, that their debut album My Love Is Cool has been awaited with keen interest.

In February 2013, they released Giant Peach and gave us a taste of what’s to come. A finely crafted track that harks back to the days when big rock bands made great pop albums, it makes no secret of its grand intentions and saw Wolf Alice become the breakout act of 2015.

With the album looming, we sat down with the band to talk about why they’re not happy with being called a ‘folk grunge’ band, how pressure is relative and why Nick Cave is God…

Click here to download a free copy of our 10th-anniversary edition featuring Wolf Alice

How’s the tour been going so far?

Theo Ellis: “It’s been amazing – better than we could have asked for. We always kind of think about it each night as to how it’s gone and the reaction of the crowd and everybody, and so far it’s just been brilliant.”

There are four of you now, but Wolf Alice started off as a duo?

Ellie Rowsell: “Yeah. Joff and I were playing together and kind of doing unofficial open mic nights in and around North London, but we also had a drummer who would play with us. When he left, we were introduced to Joel and Theo through a mutual friend. They were playing in other projects, but we just really enjoyed all playing together and made a little family once the four of us began playing.”

How are the songs different between being a duo and a four-piece? Are they developments of those earlier songs or entirely different tracks?

ER: “They’re completely different – it’s not the same thing at all. It was purely because we went under the name Wolf Alice that people make the connection and say that we were a duo first and then a four-piece, but we weren’t. We had a Soundcloud profile under the name Wolf Alice, but if we’d changed the name then people wouldn’t have made the same connection. It was just us trying to play music for the first time ever; none of the songs survive from that time.”

How do you find the dynamic of writing to be different between there being two and four of you?

ER: “Every song is written and composed in a different way. We still don’t really have one set way of making music, so it doesn’t really make any difference whether there are two or four people in the process.”

Wolf Alice first featured as cover stars of Songwriting Magazine Summer 2015

Are there any particular songwriters that inspire you?

TE: “Everyone in the band loves Nick Cave. Just because he’s incredible and with him being someone who focuses so much on the lyricism, his work is really exciting.”

ER: “I think that Radiohead are really cool as a band in terms of the writing, they seem to just do whatever they want. They bridged that gap between proper grunge-type rock guitar music and otherworldly ambient electronic music and were equally good at both types. Nobody said how much they’d changed, they just made it such a gradual and natural process.”

You mentioned the influence of Nick Cave. Are there any other lyricists that come into the fray?

TE: “The Kings Of Leon album Aha Shake Heartbreak is one.”

ER: “I think Kings Of Leon are really underrated as lyricists. Iceage are a more recent band who I think are good lyricists, too. There are lots of good lyricists, but none really jump out as having been really key to shaping how I write.”

Are there particular songs that you’ve written the lyrics for and then created the music around the lyrics?

ER: “Sometimes I’ll have a phrase in mind and then the music will come around that. But I’ve never, say, written a poem and then thought, ‘Let’s put music around that’.”

TE: “Nick Cave has a new book called The Sick Bag Song, which is a sort of epic poem where he was trying to write 13 songs and then thought, ‘I can’t turn this into music’ and it just became a kind of Paradise Lost-type of work. I think that sort of thing is really cool.”

Your debut album is being released. You must be pleased to finally reach that landmark?

TE: “We took our time working on it and things changed during the course of making it. We wanted to take our time over the record, to really hone it down, and were just afforded a great deal of time by our record label. So we’re really proud of it and, yes, it’s very exciting for us.”

You’ve been variously lauded as a ‘best breakthrough’ and ‘most blogged about’ act. Was that pressure for you when it came to writing the album?

TE: “It’s never been pressure for us before, but to be fair I think that when we were coming to the album it started to come into it.”

ER: “It wasn’t pressure about writing the album, it was pressure about what to put out, when to put it out and why weren’t we putting things out. It wasn’t as important as being able to play a show and how you write a song, but it did bring a little pressure in terms of wanting to get the ball rolling. You don’t want people to talk about you too much before you’ve put out an album because you’re scared that they’ll have too many expectations. It’s not that you’re worried about letting them down, it’s just that they might have different preconceptions of what it might sound like.”

There are two songs on the album that you previously released as singles, Bros and Fluffy. What were the reasons for re-recording those two songs?

ER: “They were among the first songs that we ever wrote and we felt like they didn’t really get the best from us. Not that they’re not good, we just thought maybe they didn’t get the service that we could give to them now, with more time to think about what was wrong and what was right with them. And also it was a sentimental thing, because they were the first songs that we ever put out together, so it’s nice to go back to them.”

Wolf Alice’s Theo Ellis: “It all just comes from what’s best for the song and that means that the song takes its own shape naturally.”

Bros sounds very different on the album. Was that an intentional change or an evolution in the song?

ER: “We kind of wanted it to sound completely different. It’s hard to change something completely sometimes.”

TE: “Yeah, we wanted to give the track a bit more of a colourful flavour rather than just straight-down-the-line indie.”

You’ve been described before as being a mixture of folk and grunge. Would you see that as a fair take on your sound?

TE: “No, because it’s just not true!”

ER: “I’ve never heard a folk band that sounds like us, so it’s just weird for us to be put into that category. We have a soft side and a loud side, which is why I guess that people make that connection. There are certainly elements of grunge in our music, though.”

TE: “Yeah, the grunge thing I do see, but the folk thing I think is just unfair on folk musicians. Hopefully when people hear the record they’ll stop thinking we’re some kind of ‘funge’ band. I’d be annoyed if I was a folk band and you said I sounded like Wolf Alice!”

Was there a particular style that you were aiming for with the album?

TE: “I think one of the things that people struggle with, with that genre question, is that we’ve never sat down among ourselves and decided that this song needs to sound like this, or be in this vein. It all just comes from what’s best for the song and that means that the song takes its own shape naturally, rather than being like, ‘Let’s put this in there.’”

Why was Giant Peach chosen as the first single for the album?

TE: “I think because it’s quite abrasive, and because in the studio it always stood out as being something that was quite visceral and intense. It’s quite a statement as a song. And it’s fun, which means now at our live shows it gets people up and we can jump around to it.”

ER: “And it’s not so crazy different from the rest of the album that it detracts from it.”

How do you see 2015 panning out?

TE: “We’re just going to stop and relax! No, I think we’re just going to be playing shows. We’re really excited about getting to grips with the album and playing the songs live; we’re proud of the album and we want to do it justice by promoting it as much and as best as we can. So I think 2015 will be full of playing gigs and being tired!”

AND THEN…

There’s been no halting the constant rise of Wolf Alice since we spoke to them back in 2015. Their trio of excellent albums, My Love Is Cool, Visions Of A Life and Blue Weekend, have earned the group both critical and commercial success. Each of those records was nominated for the Mercury Prize, with Visions Of A Life winning the award in 2018. Last year’s Blue Weekend topped the album charts and lead single The Last Man On Earth became something of a mainstay on the radio. More than the accolades and sales, it’s their expanding and evolving sound, with heads lifted from their shoes to the stars, that makes Wolf Alice’s continued progression such a thrill to behold.

Get a free copy of the 10th-anniversary edition of our digital magazine featuring Dolly Parton, Diane Warren, James Taylor, Sheryl Crow, Gary Barlow, Thomas Rhett, Wolf Alice and more, at steady.page/songwriting

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