Photo: Tom Pullen
If 2015 is going to belong to anyone, there's only one band on our lips. Wolf Alice are one of the most exciting new bands to emerge in recent memory, and are on the cusp of releasing their phenomonal debut album My Love Is Cool to the world. It's pretty immaculate
Gigwise speak to lead singer Ellie Rowsell whilst on their US tour somewhere in between Los Angeles and Austin - taking in their huge genre-twisting debut , the dying art of the B-Side and the pressures of hype (a hype so considerable that they're already booked in to play London's Brixton Academy this September).
Gigwise: Your debut My Love Is Cool sounds beautifully complete, which is something that can take bands years to achieve. Was it the sort of album you could continue writing forever?
Ellie Rowsell: Probably in the sense that there was no concept to it, we didn’t go away and write it all in one go. So it’s more a collection of songs which is something you can continue adding to but you have to pull the plug sometimes to get it finished because it could drive you crazy! We gave ourselves a time limit in the studio, if you really know you have to finish something by a certain time then you usually do.
Are there any questions you’re bored of answering already?
It really depends who I’m talking to, if it’s from a publication in Japan or something where we haven’t really been or released any music, I’d answer questions like "Where did you get your name from?" In the UK, you can find all the basic information online but sometimes it’s wrong so it’s good to ask I guess.
They seemed to have latched onto you in the US - how does it differ from playing in England?
It’s a completely different experience because we’re playing much smaller shows. When we played those sized venues in the UK we had only just started, we weren’t very well rehearsed and very nervous. When we’re playing those sizes in America now, we’re much better and more confident. We’ve had two lives as a new band and they’ve both been very different. I don’t think either of the audiences are better, but in America they definitely seem more vocal, and a tiny bit more enthusiastic in terms of the fact that we’re new over there.
You’ve played London's Shepherds Bush Empire and the LA Roxy, both signifiers of bands going places. Has the hype surrounding your group affected your output in any way?
I don’t think it’s affected our output. It’s hard to ignore and we don’t have any experience to compare it to. The strangest thing is people seemed to have already formed an opinion of you before your album is out, so you’re scared of how that’s going to change. It’s a scary thought but I’m not complaining; it’s quite exciting.
What are the biggest misconceptions about your band?
I don’t think we’ve had any huge misconceptions: without having an album out, how can people really know what we are? I don’t even know how you would describe us, so I probably wouldn’t do a very good job either. There are some bands we get compared to that I don’t really understand, a lot of female-fronted bands just because of the female presence, but if they actually listened to that band and our band back-to-back, they’d realise we don’t sound the same at all.
You’ve got some great B-Sides like ‘I Saw You (In a Corridor)’ and ‘White Leather’. Do you feel like the B-side is a dying art? A lot of bands seem to just stick on remixes these days...
I think so. Maybe it’s something to do with funding, as going into a studio to record even one song can be very expensive. Maybe, with the state of the music industry now, less people are willing to put money towards it but it’s also a case of finding the time. That’s why our B-Sides are home demos, and stuff that we’ve recorded in our bedrooms which I think is cool and shows a different side to the band that you don’t necessarily see on the singles or the album.
The album moves from big fuzzy pop songs like ‘Giant Peach’ and grooves in ‘Your Love’s Whore’. You seem to have so many disparate influences...
We don’t have one genre that we all fit into - we didn’t just grow up listening to punk music, so we didn’t make a punk album. We didn’t grow up just listening to dance music, so we didn’t make a dance album. I also think we approach our songwriting in a very open-minded way. If we set out writing a rock song and it slowly turns into something else, we wouldn’t veer it back into the direction that we started with, we let it flow and let it write itself.
What’s the strangest gifts you’ve ever received from a fan?
We usually get really nice gifts actually. People often bring Theo [Ellis, Bassist] socks, they're usually on show and people have started clocking on to it.
Could you tell us the story behind ‘Your Loves Whore’?
We wrote it a long time ago, it’s quite an early song of ours and we initially just had the beginning which we used to play as an introduction to our set. We really enjoyed playing it so we mashed together a few ideas that we already had and put them into one song.
It sounds to us like one of the songs of the summer: what do you think will be yours?
I really don’t know, it’s hard to tell because some songs really do have a summery vibe, like out of our songs something like ‘Bros’, but I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Are there any small festivals you really rate?
We played this festival this time last year called 2000 Trees, I don’t know why but the audience were just really fun. It was more heavy and hardcore bands playing, they always have a really good line-up. There’s also a little festival in Cornwall which is ran by some friends of ours called Knee Deep Festival, it’s in a really beautiful location. It was the first festival we ever played there’s no really massive names which is good as it’s great to discover new music, I’ve always enjoyed that one.
Are there any bands you haven’t seen live yet that you really want to?
I really want to see Iceage live, they’re from Denmark and are always touring so I don’t know why we haven’t had a chance to see them yet. I really liked their new album Ploughing Into The Field of Love, I’d like to see them but on the whole we’ve been pretty lucky. I’d like to see Unknown Mortal Orchestra as well, I really like them.
What are you most looking forward to this summer?
I’m really looking forward to going back to Glastonbury because when we played there last year I was so fucking nervous. Now, that we’ve done it, I feel like I can really appreciate being on stage there. I couldn’t even think about it last year because I was shitting myself. I'm also looking forward to our UK shows in September, I’ve started to recognise people that come back, I feel like we have friends in that.
My Love Is Cool is released on 22 June. The group will be performing at a number of festivals including Glastonbury, Latitude and Reading & Leeds before embarking on a full UK tour in September. For tickets and more information, click here.
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