Wolf Alice interview: 'It's not hypocritical to boycott Israel'

The four-piece on protesting against Eurovision 2019, their Mercury Prize-nominated second album, and wanting to sleep with your friends

Wolf Alice and other artists have signed a letter calling for a boycott of Eurovision 2019, hosted by Israel (Laura Allard Fleishcl)

“Yuk Foo”, the lead single from Wolf Alice’s second album, Visions of a Life, is two minutes and 13 seconds of unbridled rage. Over a siren-like guitar riff and screeching feedback, frontwoman Ellie Rowsell declares, “You bore me! You bore me to death.” As each line passes, her voice crescendos to a primal scream. “I wanna f*** all the people I meet. F*** all my friends and all the people in the street.” It is grubby, frantic and hugely cathartic. So the question is… “...How much do I want to f*** all my friends?” interrupts Rowsell with a cackle.

The band are huddled round the table of a pub near London’s King’s Cross. The barman suggests beers all round, but it’s 11.30am – “Who do you think we are?!” – so we’re sharing some water. While preparing for this interview, I was told that Rowsell, despite being the face of the band, will be reticent – that I’ll have to coax her out of her shell. I’ve had to do no such thing.

The trouble with that song, she says, pushing up the sleeves of a flimsy white t-shirt, is that people take everything she sings literally. “I think it happens a lot more when you’re a woman,” says bassist Theo Ellis. “What you say is heralded as fact. Because a girl said she wants to f*** all her friends, it means she’s promiscuous.”

“But then I wasn’t making it up,” explains Rowsell with a shrug. “Obviously I don’t want to sleep with all my friends, but it came from a real place. The song is about being full of rage, and you exaggerate things massively when you’re in that kind of state.” Besides, she says, “there aren't enough songs about how you feel about your friends. Friendship’s far more complicated than a romantic relationship, isn’t it?”

Putting the song out as a lead single was “the bravest thing we did on that record”, says drummer Joel Amey – and it was a decision that proved divisive. Wolf Alice are hardly strangers to potent, abrasive guitars, but for those who associated them with shimmering dream-pop songs like “Bros”, from their 2015 debut album My Love is Cool, it felt jarring. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh you think you’re hardcore now you’ve said f*** 10 times?’” recalls Rowsell. She couldn’t help but notice a double standard. “Why are bands like Black Flag allowed to write a song about drinking beer, and they’re cult and amazing, and then you write this song that’s supposed to be a burst of anger, and everyone’s like, ‘That’s so lame.’”

Wolf Alice's anger can be very focused. They, along with musicians such as Roger Waters and Brian Eno, as well as writers, theatre directors, filmmakers, signed a letter calling for a boycott of Eurovision 2019 hosted by Israel. I ask them why. Guitarist Joff Oddie points to the moment when “Israelis started shooting and killing people in their tens and hundreds... We agreed years ago that we wouldn’t go there, but this was about agreeing that we would make it public. It’s been the worst period of violence since the bombings in Gaza in 2014, so [for us] it was just a big kick up the arse to say, look, we do support this.”

Rowsell continues: “If you say you're not gonna go to Israel, then lots of people ask you why you're going to other countries where you don't believe in their government's actions. People ask, ‘Why do you go to America? Does that mean you support Trump?’ And I can see why [they] think that's hypocritical, but you won’t do anything if you think like that. Everywhere’s f****d, and in terms of the cultural boycott of Israel, that’s what the Palestinian people have asked for.”

Musically, too, Wolf Alice show a willingness to put everything on the line. Each track on Visions of a Life confirms they are one of the most innovative, uninhibited guitar bands around, punching their way out of whatever box anyone tries to put them in. Second single, “Don’t Delete the Kisses” is iridescent and contemplative, while the syncopated strut of the third, “Beautifully Unconventional”, written from the perspective of Christian Slater's character in the 1988 film Heathers, shows their poise and wit. It’s acquired them a fiercely loyal fan-base since they broke out with their debut EP, Blush, in 2013. By the end of that year, the buzz around them had grown so loud that BBC 6 Music declared them “the most blogged-about band of the year”. My Love is Cool, released two years later, was certified Gold.

These days, Wolf Alice are just happy to still be in the conversation. When they discovered that Visions of a Life had been shortlisted for this year’s Mercury Prize – the second time they’ve achieved this honour – they cried. “Everyone’s always like, ‘That’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,’” says Ellis, fiddling with the safety pin in his ear, “so for it to happen again … it makes us feel like we’re a proper band.”

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“It means more [than the first nomination], in a way,” agrees Rowsell, who was herself a judge for the Mercury Prize the past two years. “You feel less important when you’re putting out your second album, so you hope that people aren’t bored of you.”

What do they make of the rest of the list, which includes Florence + The Machine’s High as Hope, Nadine Shah’s Holiday Destination and Arctic Monkeys’ Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino? “There’s loads of omissions,” says Amey, “but that’s the way it is.”

“The first time we were nominated, I knew hardly anyone on this list,” says Rowsell. “This time, my nan probably knows half of them. It feels a bit more mainstream, with a few exceptions. I was ready for Shame or Let’s Eat Grandma… But there’s Nadine Shah, who’s new to me.”

Ellis, though, sees the sheer number of omissions as a positive thing. “If there weren’t albums that hadn’t been acknowledged, if these were the only options, it would be concerning. But if everyone’s saying there are loads of other albums, music’s in a good shape.”

There are plenty who would disagree with him though – particularly when it comes to rock music. Wolf Alice, in fact, are often held up as the saviours of a dying genre. “That word saviour’s a bit weird,” squirms Rowsell – but she does have one bugbear when it comes to the way guitar music is going. “When I’m at festivals and I’m watching bands, a lot of it is very performance-based, but not in regards to playing. A lot of it’s on [backing] track, basically. When you do watch a band that are actually playing their parts, that’s so fun to watch. That’s something I hope comes back. It’s really hard, it’s expensive, but that could be saved by less expensive rehearsal rooms and higher fees.”

Festival fees, agrees Amey, are pretty pitiful. “It’s mad that you pay a band the same as you pay a DJ. Not to be rude to DJs but like, one person turning up with a USB stick probably gets the same as six people with techs and stuff.”

In Wolf Alice’s view, a lack of money, not talent, is the main reason there are fewer guitar bands around these days. “I think it’s hard to be in a standard guitar band now,” says Rowsell, “because, in London at least, it’s so expensive to find a place where four people are allowed to make loads of noise, where they’ve got all the equipment that’s needed to make heavy music. Whereas you can sit at home and make really amazing synth sounds and incredible drum beats, and make it sound professional in your room.”

“When everyone talks about how there’s not many guitar bands,” says Ellis, “if you look at the way the world is, and the climate, it’s difficult to have 24-hour access to equipment and stuff like that. How accessible is £7,000 amps, and electricity, and saving up to get into a studio?”

Rowsell has been thinking, recently, about a question a fan asked her. “They said, ‘I don’t have any money, but how can I make the sound that you guys make, with all your pedals, without any money?’ It’s like… you can’t! But that’s so unfair!”

When the band first started, they only had an acoustic guitar. Later, they graduated to electric open mics at which the venues, such as Camden’s Purple Turtle, would provide the equipment. “I can’t imagine that happening now,” says Rowsell. “But you make your sound with what you’ve got. You get your style from what you don’t have sometimes.”

“It’s important to do that,” says Ellis. “If you have everything, where the f*** do you start?”

Wolf Alice play shows in Manchester and London this December; see wolfalice.co.uk for details