Wolf Alice talk politics, production, and pulling out the stops for Visions of a Life

Wolf Alice had a highly significant cultural moment earlier this year, when they popularised the now famous ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’ chant at a Tories Out march in London. Labour supporters at heart, the band are happy to elaborate on their political views.

“Just following the election, there was a lot of really strong support for Jeremy Corbyn,” says bassist Theo Ellis. “It was a time when potentially massive change seemed ready to happen. Obviously change did happen, but not in the way a lot of people expected. However, there’s a silver lining in that we saw so much support at that march.

“I think the older you get, the more realise what you really believe in. And the four of us in the band are all on the same page with that. We’ve been realising recently that, with the advent of social media, people aren’t just going to news outlets to get informed. They’re looking to a lot of different places and people. So we were just showing our outlook. It seems like Brexit has galvanised people to speak up, rather than not be heard. And from that, massive change has started to happen.”

When Hot Press last spoke to Wolf Alice last August, just before their incredible set at Electric Picnic, they were deep in the trenches of album number two.

“Even before we began thinking about the second record,” notes Ellis, “we all collectively realised we had ideas floating about. We realised we’d been just casually, sometimes subconsciously, drawing up sketches of melodies on our phones. Or writing down rough ideas. Before we knew it, we’d gotten to a point where we had a lot of material, and it was just about heading to the studio to work on it together.”

While most of the ideas for Vision had their genesis in Wolf Alice’s home city of London, the real breakthrough came during production, when the band ventured to LA to work with renowned producer and musician Justin Meldal-Johnsen.

“We wanted to work with Justin,” says Ellis, “because he’s got a really broad scope of ideas. He’s worked with so many diverse artists, from The Ravonettes all the way to M83. We loved that – one is garage-y and distorted, the other is glorious, synthesised, polished music. He has this ability to get the best out of any band and highlight their uniqueness, no matter who they are. That’s what led us to him. He’s just got this really great range of stuff he’s done before and it’s quite stylistically broad.”

“Stylistically broad” is perhaps a fitting description of Visions Of A Life. The album sees in-yer-face punk songs like ‘Yuk Foo’ sit comfortably alongside deliriously sultry numbers such as ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’.

“When we did our pre-production work with Justin, things started to develop,” reflects Ellis. “The album took its own direction. We very much had the songs written by the time we got out there, but Justin’s input really allowed the ‘sonic exploration’ – which sounds like the wankiest thing I’ve ever said! But yeah, that’s when we arrived at all the disparate sounds on the album. And we’re all pleased and excited by how it turned out.”

Visions Of A Life is out now. Wolf Alice play the Ulster Hall, Belfast on November 27, and the Olympia, Dublin (28).