Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell Talks Visions of a Life, Performing at Urbanscapes and More

By Ammar Haziq  •  16 Oct 2018 in Interview

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Images: Eloise Porteous

UK’s genre-bending band Wolf Alice stormed into the music scene and took everyone by the throat with 2015’s ‘My Love Is Cool’, which earned them a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Performance. Their LP Visions of a Life debuted at number two on the UK album charts, was hailed as one of the best albums of that year by multiple publications and scored them a Mercury Prize.

Although the band didn’t expect the crazy reception, we knew on the first listen that it’s special. The album plays with different styles and genres and fits perfectly as a whole LP. Songs like ‘Yuk Foo’ makes you scream and mosh hard while ‘Don’t Delete Kisses’ gives listeners a summer-pop daydream.

Before flying out to KL for Urbanscapes’ Unlimited Grooves Festival, we had a chat with front woman Ellie Rowsell about winning the Mercury Prize, their genre-bending sound and what to expect at their show.

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Hi Ellie, first of all, congratulations on winning the Mercury Prize. How crazy was that?
Thank you. Yeah it was great, it was… [laughs] it was crazy.

We love Visions of a Life. There’s no shortage of diversity in that album. Did you guys expect the reception to be like that?
I don’t know why it was a success, I just don’t think about it like that. Yeah, I think I expected people to like it. I really like it myself so like, hopefully if I like it other people will like it. Also like winning the Mercury Prize, I didn’t expect the reception to be like that.

We know after this tour, you guys are gonna take some time off…
Yeah we are.

Possibly working on a third album?
Yeah I think so, like not recording it but definitely writing and maybe tryna get together some songs for a possible third album at some point.

We read in an interview that you said when you guys are writing music, genre’s not a limiting factor..
If I recall correctly, I don’t really care about the type of genre, I just write songs.

There’s grunge, dream pop even hardcore in Visions of Life. How important is it to have that kind of creative diversity when making music?
Yeah, it’s quite cool in a sense like, it’s quite hard to perform it and stuff but it’s easier when you accept people for what they want to be/do than to want something else. I think I have the patience for that.

We can wait to see you guys at Urbanscapes!
I can’t wait to come!

What should we be prepared for before seeing Wolf Alice at the festival?
Just prepare for lost of energy. We try to keep our set energetic and we also try to keep it dynamic as we have lots of songs to show the crowd. It’ll just be cool.

Thanks again Ellie. See ya soon!
Thank you, Have a lovely day!

Get your tickets to see Wolf Alice rock the stage at Urbanscapes’ Unlimited Grooves Festival this November. Listen to Visions of Life here.