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Aug 21, 2015 By Mike Hilleary Photography by James Loveday Web Exclusive

Band Name: Wolf Alice

Members: Ellie Rowsell (vocals), Joff Oddie (guitars), Theo Ellis (bass), Joel Amey (drums)

Where: London, U.K.

Foundation and Formation:

Going to school in London Ellie Rowsell knew she wanted to be in a band. Unfortunately none of the people she knew within her immediate social circle could even put a few chords together on guitar or play the drums. “I felt totally isolated,” says Rowsell. “A lot of my friends listened to music, but they didn’t really go to gigs or things like that.”

Graduating and supporting herself working at a bar, Rowsell continued to look for someone, anyone, with even a little bit of technical ability playing music. “It was kind of my dad who [found Joff],” says Rowsell of Wolf Alice’s guitarist Joff Oddie. “A girl had put up an advert online looking for a guitarist to join her band and Joff had applied to it with a video of him playing and my dad said, ‘Oh this guy’s really good at playing the guitar. You should see if he’ll do some gigs with you.’ Cause I wanted to play live but I was too afraid to do it on my own because I wasn’t very good. So I emailed him and he said, ‘Yes.’ He had just moved to London and didn’t really know anyone and wanted to play music.”

Recalling those early sessions with Rowsell, Oddie says, “I think what I was really impressed by was that technically as a musician she wasn’t an incredible guitar player or anything, but what I was really interested in with her was her ability to work within her limitations, using really, really simple ideas and make those ideas really intriguing. She played me some songs and all the things she was doing were very simple, but they were like, ‘Whoa, that’s amazing.’”

Eventually rounding out the band’s line-up with the addition of Theo Ellis on bass and Joel Amey on drums, Wolf Alice, named after a revisionist short story of Red Riding Hood by Angela Carter, released two EPs, Blush (2013) and Creature Songs (2014) before finally delivering their full-length debut My Love Is Cool earlier this summer.

Reference Points: Garbage, Nirvana, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Hole, and Elastica.

Sound and Vision:

Releases: Blush EP (Chess Club), Creature Songs EP (Dirty Hit), My Love Is Cool (Dirty Hit/RCA).

Links:

www.facebook.com/wolfalicemusic

www.wolfalice.co.uk

www.twitter.com/wolfalicemusic

(Also be sure to pick up Under the Radar’s current print issue to read a separate longer article on Wolf Alice.)