Dream Wife: Born out of Art and Feminism

Dream Wife chose a deliberately misleading name for their incendiary art-pop project, the band tell Hot Press. “Dream” suggests soft-focused escapism. “Wife” has all sorts of other connotations.
“It’s this thing of flipping the script and smashing it, in terms of what a woman can be and what a woman can do,” say guitarist Alice Go, outlining the contrast between their gentle moniker and the shin-kicking reality of their furious avant-rock. “We are three women doing this, supporting each other through it.

“It’s been a personal and internal journey – supporting ourselves through getting to know ourselves and then trying to share that strength and what you’ve learned, that stuff you’ve unpicked, with other people – to help them break their own rules and become more powerful. It’s about empowerment.”

Gender politics are at the heart of who they are as musicians and people, the trio – one of 2018’s must hotly tipped new acts – explain.

“It’s about equality,” says bassist Bella Podpadec. “We have to shout louder because women still aren’t heard. We’re not at a place where things are equal. We’re in a position where we have a voice and we have to honour that.

“Culture is just so rampant, with absolutely engrained casual sexism,” chimes in bandmate Go, “Things that wouldn’t even be necessarily read as misogynistic, in this hard, sharp way that, when I was a kid, I thought feminists were angry about. It’s so subtly engrained in the way we interact as a society. “

Their music is a sugar-sweet din – catchy at moments, guttural and ugly as required. Predictably, if reductively, they’ve been likened to the ’90s rriot girl scene – a comparison that holds up only in so far as they’re as serious about their politics as their music, and embrace a fierce DIY aesthetic.

There’s wit and playfulness in there too – but they’re deadly serious about their message. ‘Somebody’ is a critique of society’s stance on rape – a searing pop editorial that, for obvious reasons, has gained in pertinence in the time since their interview with Hot Press (hint: open a newspaper).

“Sexism is so normalised,” says the three-piece’s Reykjavik-born singer Rakel Mjöll. “What we’re doing is normalising the concept of feminism, normalising equality and the conversation about equality. Men have to get on board as well.”

Depressingly if inevitably, they are required to field constant questions about the challenge of being women in the music business.

“It’s not a choice to be part of that conversation,” says Go. “As three women occupying this rock space, this normally male-dominated space, of course we’re going to have those conversations. It’s a funny situation – to speak for all women. We aren’t all women – we don’t know all women…. Of course we stand for all women… We’re three women in our twenties trying to rock.”

Dream Wife’s background owes as much to art as rock’ ’n’ roll. They met at art college in Brighton, and initially imagined the project as a “fake girl band” (the name, if you’re still wondering, is from a a 1953 romantic comedy starring Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant).

“When we started this, it was a time we were talking about art a lot. It was another way of approaching a creative outlet,” says Go. “Now we’re first and foremost a band.

“But we’re also super interested in all the other things you can do with the platform of being a band… There are a lot of avenues you can go down in a group, in terms of aesthetic decisions. It’s very exciting.”

Dream Wife play the BBC Biggest Weekend on Saturday May 26