When most bands start out, they try to find their angle and stick to it, using it to stand out. Wolf Alice couldn’t care less. The four-piece indie rock act formed in North London back in 2010 between friends Ellie Rowsell and Joff Oddie. The two put out a self-titled EP that year named after an Angela Carter short story. It was full of synth-laden slow songs, but after a few years playing free shows, they realized they needed a rhythm section. Cue drummer Joel Amey and bassist Theo Ellis stepping in.
As a full band, the four began crafting up all sorts of music. There’s the shoegaze wave of “Blush“, The Cranberries-style pop of “Bros“, the unrelenting rock of “Fluffy“, and the grunge angst of “Moaning Lisa Smile“. They can’t seem to find a single sound they love best, and that’s exactly why we love them. There’s a flexibility that keeps them from sounding like a direct ripoff of My Bloody Valentine or Nirvana, yet critics struggle to compare them to anyone else. Wolf Alice have natural ears for what makes a catchy song.
Before their show at the Middle East Upstairs this Sunday, Joff Oddie took some time to chat to us beforehand. We looked at the band’s origins, the struggles that come with an influx of major press, and why they’re so good at trying on different sounds. If his answers don’t have you convinced, take our word for it when we say their live shows are more raw than on the record, and catching them play such a tiny stage will be a story to tell the grandkids. See you there? See you there.
Allston Pudding: If you didn’t grow up knowing one another, how exactly did you all meet?
Wolf Alice: Me and Ellie started playing music together about four and a half years ago. It was just acoustic songs. Do you have open mic nights in the states? Where you can just go to the bars and play for free?
AP: Yeah, we do.
WA: Okay, well we were doing that for a while and it got pretty boring, really. We weren’t getting anywhere with it. It’s quite hard for artists to be taken seriously in that kind of environment, so we decided to get a rhythm section, I guess, to become a bit louder. Instead of playing open mics and having no one listen to us, we figured we would maybe actually go places by being louder and being obnoxious or whatnot. We got a couple friends involved: the drummer was my friend and the bassist was a friend of Ellie’s. For one or more reasons, they dropped out. One broke his arm and Joel came as a replacement and just kinda stayed. When the bass player dropped out, Theo came as his replacement. Both of the guys were short-term fits that ended up as permanent fixtures. They were friends of our manager at the time and they stuck.
AP: And you all get along well?
WA: Yeah! Well, you kind of have to, really.
AP: True.
WA: I think I’ve seen them everyday for the last two years. We do everything together.
AP: So even though you guys formed in 2010, you’ve had a slow roll out of the songs you’ve written. There were songs back then, the first physical singles in 2013, the Blush EP that same year, and then the Creature Songs EP last year. Normally bands feel pressure to put out a full-length asap. Was that not the case for you?
WA: Yeah, I guess not. There’s a lot of different factors. A lot of our friends in bands got signed early by majors. There was pressure from them to put out a record now and go, go, go. We’ve kind of always been, well, if you knew about us, you would know we’ve always been straightforward right from the beginning. We were transparent about that. We would put songs out as we recorded them. You can trace our lineage. Definitely, though. We’ve gotten a lot better at songwriter and gotten a lot better at playing live, actually. We decided we would release our album when we’re ready to do that. A lot of bands are in development behind closed doors and come out with this big marketing campaign and are expected to play these huge venues when they haven’t had the years of playing toilet venues. It takes one to know one. It takes courage to do it the way we have.
AP: It’s interesting what you said about the marketing plan because you guys have garnered a lot of press naturally, especially over the last two years. There’s been NME and iTunes and stuff. That must get nerve-wracking.
WA: I don’t know. To be honest, I think we love it [laughs]. It’s an essential part int his day and age to succeed. When iTunes picked us up as “One of the Ones to Watch” or whatever and NME writes a feature on us, it all feels like the naturally stepping stones. We’ve been doing it for so long that all those things didn’t come at once, so the press shouldn’t either.
AP: They, as well as us, are excited for the full-length to come out. What can we expect?
WA: There’s elements from the EPs in there in that it’s a more developed version of what we’ve written. Dynamically–recording-wise, production-wise–it’s a lot better. There’s a lot of variation on the record and quite a bit of poppy moments. I think people will get more value when the record comes out.
AP: What are you most proud of on the record?
WA: I think I’m most proud of it being such a diverse record. I’d like to think we’re not one-trick ponies. We have a “Moaning Lisa Smile” and it’s not a record full of “Moaning Lisa Smile”s, you know. It’s not a grunge record. It’s more diverse than that and hopefully more clever than that.
AP: Did you hit any speedbumps when making it?
WA: It all went pretty smoothly, to be honest. Actually, the smoothest run we’ve had. We’ve spent weeks before in the studio and had nothing use-able, but this one was pretty smooth. Hopefully that comes across.
AP: Was that because you had everything shelled out already before entering the studio?
WA: A lot of songs on the record are ones we’ve made recordings of before, so we had a good idea of what the key ideas of the songs were. I think we had a good idea. There were maybe three tracks or something we hadn’t done before yet, though, so that was kind of freeflowing and like “Let’s just jump into this and see what comes out.”
AP: Do you guys normally write that way, getting together and seeing what comes of something, or do you bring riffs and melodies to the table?
WA: We don’t have a set way like other bands do. Some are written entirely by a member. Others are just riffs like you said, later developed. We don’t have a set way and I think that’s important for us to be able to keep a diverse sound. That’s how the outfit changes. It’s important to us to try different ways of writing.
AP: You guys have been busy touring with Alt-J, which means you’re playing some crazy large venues.
WA: Yeah, it’s really cool! It’s way different than the venues we’re doing in the States, like 100-cap venues. Funnily enough, it’s kind of less nerve-wracking than the smaller ones. In a 10,000-cap venue, you’re about 30 feet away from the crowd and you can’t see a lot of people. You have to focus a lot more on still performing, if you know what I mean, whereas in a smaller venue you’re forced into remembering the people are there.
AP: Do you guys normally get nervous?
WA: Oh, we love it. Playing live is the bread and butter of being in a band. We take it very seriously. We rehearse a lot before shows. We pride ourselves on our live shows. We do get nervous, though, before shows. If you don’t, there’s something wrong. That means the show doesn’t really matter.
AP: When you guys started, it was a lot folk-ier instead of this rock, so why make the change?
WA: The reason we did that stuff was more out of necessity. We didn’t have the means for a big band yet back then so we were focusing on songwriting. We had to. When we got the chance to develop and had a little bit of money, we invested the two into making a band-band. The focus has always been about the songwriting. That’s been true from the beginning.
AP: It’s funny in a way because you guys often get written up as being a grunge band even though your sound, as you’ve said, fluctuates a lot. You’re able to warp your sound to dodge easy labels. What’s your secret, so to speak, to keep from sounding like a grunge ripoff or some Nirvana wannabe act?
WA: To be honest, I think it’s because we have a short attention span [laughs]. We get bored of that stuff pretty quickly. None of us listen to one type of music. We grew up in the internet age of playlists, iTunes, and streaming websites where you listen to anything all the time. We didn’t want to make one type of music. The idea of that alone is boring. I think that’s the secret [laughs].
Wolf Alice are playing the Middle East Upstairs this Sunday night, March 1, at 8pm. Tickets are available here.