Dream Wife: “Hello this is us, here we are”

With thoughts of a debut album round the corner, we grabbed them to find where they were at.

This weekend, we’re down in lovely Henham park for Latitude 2017. Featuring loads of amazing bands, and a smaller number of equally brilliant sheep, we’ve been bringing you photos, news, reports, interviews and more across the weekend.

Dream Wife is just one of our faves playing today’s event, and with thoughts of a debut album round the corner, we grabbed them to find where they were at.

Your festival season’s been pretty busy so far?
Alice: Yeah it’s been pretty intense so far.
Rakel: July has been beautiful and different. Yesterday we were in France, the day before we were in Spain. It’s been a wild ride. It’s our first festival season.

How’s that going?
Rakel: It’s really exciting, new experiences.
Alice: It’s nice to bump into the same bands again and again. It’s quite cute when your label tells you to meet a band, it’s like play dates. It’s funny to be somewhere in Spain and on play dates. It’s really cute.

Do you do touristy stuff?
Alice: It depends on the weather I guess.
Rakel: We’ve seen a bunch of great bands, but not much exploring. I think one of the exciting things that I find with festivals, is playing to crowds you wouldn’t normally play to and winning people over. It’s hard; you have to really work them. It’s really satisfying when people are having a really great time, and maybe they didn’t know you before.

You have to kick things up a notch.
Rakel: We normally start with our song ‘Heartbreaker’, so “Hey hey hey” is the intro lyric, and it really draws people in I think. “Hey, we’re playing now!”
Alice: We’ve played four shows in France over the past month, and it’s nice to play in a place where people don’t necessarily understand you, and they don’t have tom because that’s what music is about.
Rakel: People can still get into it.
Alice: You’re not really cracking jokes between songs, because not everyone will understand you. It’s nice to play music, and either you like it, or you don’t. Is the music good, or not.

Music wise, how’s the future looking for that? Is there a full-length?
Alice: We’re mixing it, hoping to send it to masters very soon.
Rakel: It’s kind of coming together, it’s like that point where you start to hear it as a whole, and you start to get a sense of what it’ll be as a body of work. It’s an exciting point in the process, but yeah we’re getting there. It’s going to be great to have an album out there for sure.

Photo: Poppy Marriott / Dork

[sc name=”pull” text=”It’s going to be great to have an album out there.”]

It’s tough with a full-length, you need to capture who you are.
Alice: It’s also our debut, it’s like, “Hello this is us, here we are.”
Rakel: It’s an introduction as well in that sense, it’s important in a lot of ways.
Alice: I’m excited. We’ve written a bunch of songs, we’ve chosen songs that we want to have on this, and it represents what we’re doing now and what’s happening now around us, and isn’t that what you want?

That’s all you can ask for really isn’t it?
Alice: Yeah, so I’m excited to have people hear these songs.
Rakel: We’ve had a long relationship with these songs already, and it’s going to be great for people to connect with them outside of the live show. Certain songs they’ve been with us since the start, and they’ve grown with us, and there’s something special about this point.
Alice: And changed.
Rakel: Yeah, and changed. The point they’re at right now it’s, “Here we are, this is our music.” I feel like we’ve got it down.
Alice: That’s a lot of pressure.
Rakel: And also with the EP, Alice recorded most of that, and it was very much off our own backs, and that’s what we were able to do at the time. Now we’ve signed with Lucky Number, who are the most incredible label, and with their support, it’s been really incredible to bring a more accomplished thing together.
Bella: Sonically on this album, we’re trying to push it in a place the EP couldn’t get to at that point. It’s definitely along those lines, but bigger and better.
Alice: And we have so much praise for our label, Lucky Number, because they’ve given us full creative trust. It’s so nice to go into a collaborative project, which it is, making an album, whether it be visually or sound, and managing to have the final say always, which often people don’t get. They just understand you; it’s a beautiful relationship. It’s nice that it’s not just us that’s making it, it’s such a big group of people that have come together. It’s working really well, so I’m excited for this baby to be all of ours.
Bella: This baby? Did you call the album a baby?
Alice: That’s what exciting about albums, they grow for such a long time.
Bella: They have this life that no one ever sees. It’s exciting.
Alice: I’m also excited to have it on vinyl, I like it physical too. Our manager can frame it and put it on his wall, that’s what he wants to do. He’s really into framing vinyl, that’s his thing.