Wolf Alice keeps fans guessing by following their musical muse - Global News

Since they began in London, England, in 2010, Wolf Alice has gone from a duo to a fuzzy, grungy band, to one that now brings out all kinds of feels from the 1970s. Now up to four albums along with a series, four EPs (including one of lullabies) and a long list of singles, the band has won both the prestigious Mercury Prize for Britain’s best album of the year (Visions of a Life, 2018) and a Brit Award for Best British Group (2022).

I had a chance to talk with singer Ellie Rowsell, guitarist Joff Oddie and drummer Theo Ellis between shows in Montreal and Toronto.

Alan Cross: You were into a sort of a grungy phase for a while, and then there was this dream pop phase. And now this, with the most recent album, it’s got some ’70s vibes to it. How do you decide to do these things? It’s always risky for a band to change direction like that.

AC: Have there been situations where you’ve tried to go in a specific direction and thought, “no, this isn’t working,” so you go somewhere else?’

Theo Ellis: No, I feel like pre-The Clearing, we just did wherever our inspiration took us and then just picked the best songs, you know. It was only till The Clearing that we kind of spoke in advance about how we wanted things to sound.

AC: What did you say? How did you speak of it?

JO: Yeah, we were listening to a lot of stuff, weren’t we? We listened to a lot of Beatles, a lot like the Carpenters, and people that were kind of doing I suppose the pop music at that time was framed around band-ness. So it’s an interesting kind of focal point for us to look back and think, kind of, you know, pop music in band form. What does that actually look like?

AC: Did recording in LA influence any of this?

AC: Did you use tape or was this all digital?

TE: We bounced. When we first got there, we described to Greg what we were trying to do and he was like simultaneously buying a brand new tape machine while we were talking about our influence, how we wanted things to kind of feel and sound. And so we wanted that tape feel. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of the elements, particularly I think all the drums, I think, are bounced to tape and then sent back into the computer.

AC: White Horses is easily my favourite from the album. It starts as a California type pop song with a monotone delivery from Joff. And then Ellie comes in with this vocal that is a complete counterpoint to everything else and then it all resolves quite sophisticatedly back into the monotone as the song continues to build towards its climax. Where did you come up with the vocal line for that in the middle? Because it’s so different from everything else that’s happening in the song.

ER: I don’t actually know where that kind of like Dolores O’Riordan—I don’t know what the word is, like lilting or something, or like yodel-y vibes, isn’t it? I was just trying to think of other little elements we could put in, and then as it does, it evolves. And I remember we remember struggling at one point to kind of work out like what bit should go where, what’s the chorus, and Greg was just like, it should be like this, this, this, and this, right?

AC: What do you find different about touring North America versus touring, say, the U.K. and Europe? How are we different? Don’t hold back.

JO: I think Canada and America feel very different. America is so big. I mean, state by state, city by city, it all feels so distinct, you know, very, very different places. So, I almost wouldn’t want to generalize this.

AC: Speaking of playing, what was your worst gig ever?

JO: It was very, very early in our career. We thought we were going to get signed at this really small show in London, a place called the Lexington. And all the record labels were there. We were like, “This is the big! This is the big shot! This is like the one!” So we’re playing a song called Leaving You . Yeah. Which is the song that starts with Ellie singing and playing guitar. And then there’s a moment where everything comes in all at once. The mood’s right, it hits in and it’s dreadful. It’s absolutely awful. And we can’t work out what’s going on. And our manager has his head in his hands and he’s literally like hiding from all the industry people while we’re swapping out amps, swapping out guitars, can’t work out for like half an hour. There was a weird bug in Ellie’s tuner that set her guitar to be tuned down like a step or half a step or something like that, so it’s just awful dissonance. So that set us back a while.

AC: I do a program called The Ongoing History of New Music. It’s a documentary program that examines all sorts of things about alt and indie music. And a couple of years ago I did a program on female guitar heroes. And I included you because of the way you encourage women to pick up a guitar. Tell me about that.

ER: I think I’m proud of myself for playing the guitar on stage because I’m not a confident guitar player and I find it really hard. And yet I did it. I wanted to, I find it fun as well. And it’s a vessel for songwriting for me. I wouldn’t be able to write songs if I didn’t know what I’d know on the guitar.

AC: Haven’t you invited girls and women up on stage to play with you?

ER: We used to do that quite a lot, which is really fun. And yeah, but don’t feel like I’m like encouraging. Well, I obviously encouraging. What I do feel like I do is maybe encourage people to play guitar without being a virtuoso, you know, like you don’t have to be the best of the best at whatever you do to do it.