DREAM WIFE: Doing things on their terms
Addison paterson
DREAM WIFE: Doing things on their terms
March 4, 2019
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Addison Paterson
There was a feeling in the air,” says Alice, the guitar-wielding third of Dream Wife, about the band’s first visit to Belfast for BBC’s Biggest Weekend last May. Falling on the weekend of the repeal vote, an historic mark of progress felt not only in Ireland but across the world, Dream Wife played a short but ever so poignant set that ended with their deeply-needed cry for autonomy, ‘Somebody’. The crowd echoed vocalist Rakel’s shouts of ‘I am not my body, I am somebody’ with a ferocity that carried the charge of the weekend’s monumental step forward.
“I think with Repeal The 8th, it’s powerful in a way that you can’t understand when you’re playing it”. Having spent the past two weeks playing shows in the US, the song’s ability to lock into different political environments became obvious to the band. “Like with the Kavanaugh case, playing ‘Somebody’ there felt like engaging with it some way. [Afterwards] a lot of people said ‘I needed that today’. It means something to people, it means something to us every time we play it. Definitely in Belfast that day, there was an energy.”
Sitting down with me in Dublin’s iconic Whelan’s Bar, Alice talks with an urgency and enthusiasm you’d neither expect nor demand of someone who’d already played upwards of 100 shows this year. “It was a song that we wrote really quickly in the practice room, talking about the #MeToo campaign and the Slut Walk in Reykjavík. Some of Rakel’s friends were involved in that. We didn’t expect to write ‘Somebody’ that day. It came very naturally out of a conversation that mattered to us. It’s so much bigger than us.”
While #MeToo didn’t necessarily gather the momentum within music as it did in Hollywood, the band find themselves at the very centre of a movement of young bands who, quite frankly, have had enough. The same year as Dream Wife’s debut, Goat Girl sung of smashing a creep’s head in; Courtney Barnett addressed women’s after-dark fears. “We’re always aware of where we stand politically, or at least how that appears. It’s not that we want to shy away from those questions. We want to speak on behalf of us three as women in music, but you don’t want it to become you, in a sense of being pigeonholed.”
But how exactly do you make art out of outrage? “It’s this whole attitude of taking of taking aggression and channelling that into this positivity and solidarity. It’s not about bowing down to what someone else expects, be that the industry or society. If you’re a woman, just make music how you want to make it. That’s the vibe. But it’s a conversation we still need to keep happening. Because it’s not equal ground just yet, at all,” she says.
As hands-on involvement goes there’s little more Dream Wife could do. We touch on the isolation within under-represented communities, something the band try to combat through their girl gang ethos. “I think it’s this attitude of, you could pick up an instrument and start a band, you could do whatever you want.” Practicing what they preach, this was exactly how Dream Wife began. An art school project done good situation, they started out by touring Canada with four songs as part of Rakel’s performance piece. “There were these kind of structures the institution maybe enforces – and this thing it expects from you – as art. I think we were all kind of figuring out what we wanted from that. It was like, it didn’t have to be anything apart from what we were going to figure it out to be. I think that was a really liberating thing to just be working with your friends.”
The sense of solidarity from those early tours has manifested within the project since, she explains. “It was this thing of going out and doing it. We didn’t really have a plan. It’s just snowballed since. We couldn’t expect this to happen, but it’s been about us believing in and supporting each other through that, and coming out the other side and wanting to encourage other women or non-binary people to – it doesn’t have to be a band, it can be many things – but to pursue things.” A genuine attachment to the cause, the Wives filled their free hours in Dublin by putting out a call on Instagram for an open conversation on what it’s like to be a woman in the industry, held between press and their set time.
After our chat, about twenty of us huddled around pint glasses in a cosy upstairs parlour room. Rakel, Alice and Bella led the discussion, but mostly listened. “We have this platform and we’re going to try to use it. It’s important weaving things in that way. These are the messages in our songs. How do we link all of these things in? It’s important for there to be a feeling of solidarity in this community surrounding Dream Wife.” The Wives spoke like friends and offered their advice. Mostly, to just do.
Well-established in the London scene where they’re now based, their connection to their Brighton base has changed since the band’s conception. “We weren’t really part of the music scene. We were kind of like the new kids on the block, this unconventional art school band. It’s definitely in retrospect that you see these amazing bands that were surrounding us at the time, like Our Girl and Black Honey. It’s a lot of bands working really hard.” And most with day jobs as well, I say. “It’s not the 90s, it’s not Britpop anymore, you know what I mean?” I do know; she laughs. “That’s all long gone. I think Black Honey are a great example of this. They’ve just been working hard on the ground, working with fans.” Feeling more a part of it now, Dream Wife keep their Brighton link through manager Tim Hampson, label runner extraordinaire of Cannibal Hymns (Our Girl, NANCY), and contributors themselves to the supportive, DIY ethos.
The change in industry has also seen it opening up, with bands like Dream Wife tearing a hole that creates a path for others. “It’s the upkeep of that conversation, because I think the feeling of change can come and pass people by.” Before their tour, they appealed to female and non-binary artists to apply for their support slots. “It feels important to have a band that’s unconventional in the sense that they’re just fucking ripping it up on their own terms, alongside us in that way that we’ve kind of felt like freaks in the industry. In a sense of people try to mould you and shape you when you’ve just got to stick to your guns.”
Doing things on their own terms is certainly one way of putting it. “It feels like we’ve kind of learnt that through doing this band the way we’ve done it. Just three women who took a drum machine out to Canada and had four songs and did a tour. It feels like we earnt our chops and learnt a lot about what this is by doing. It’s just trying to encourage people to just go for it. Believe in yourself and believe in your friends. Make great things together. Reach out to those communities around you, be that on the internet or whatever.”