![]() ![]() ![]() It was at this point she started to write her own songs, which tended towards the plaintive and acoustic, but by the time she discovered Nirvana and The Pixies, her songwriting had become distinctly more gutsy. Then, at the age of 14, a friend introduced her to alternative rock. She was born and bred in north London, and attended the Camden School for Girls where, she says, “I felt guilty for not liking subjects like science.” Her parents - father a painter and decorator, mother an assistant nurse at a sexual health clinic – encouraged her to join after-school clubs in the hope that something might pique her interest. People are very quick to take offence at the slightest thing, aren’t they – and then blog about it.” I like to think we’re pretty jokey people, self-deprecating – and we can be quite moronic, too – but we’ve had to learn to be careful in how we present ourselves, just in case. It also makes you watch everything you say in a public situation, especially in interviews, or between songs on stage. “Being well-known, or sort of well-known, is weird,” she says. Like much else in her world right now, things like award nominations only make her feel awkward. They didn’t win, but that’s okay, Rowsell insists. It was later nominated for a Mercury Prize. Their album came out last summer, and entered the charts at number two. The band formed at the end of 2012, and quickly amassed a growing - and largely teenage - fanbase long before any record company was smart enough to sign them. Two years ago, she was still holding down a day job in a denim repair shop, music something she played cautiously on the side. Whenever she becomes particularly uncomfortable, she pulls at the gold necklace around her neck until it leaves red marks on her skin. She is sufficiently shy that eye contact is indulged in only when it cannot be avoided, and she spends most of the hour we are together working new grooves into the pub table with her thumbnail. She is willowy and waif-like, dressed in a pair of bright blue Levi’s and tiny white T-shirt, her eyes a luminous shade of brown Farrow & Ball would likely call honeycomb. Even as a kid, she says, I would play pretend and wish I was an adult. Consequently, it is only she who turns up for our interview today in a deserted North London pub. It’s a habit that gave Wolf Alice’s new album ‘Visions Of A Life’, due for release on September 29, its name. Wolf Alice are a quartet – Joff Oddie on guitar, Theo Ellis on bass, Joel Amey on drums - but it is singer/guitarist Rowsell that receives the lion’s share of attention. Ellie Rowsell is in an interesting position right now, one common to any singer in a band in which the spotlight falls almost exclusively on the person upfront. ![]()
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