Big Deal's Alice Costelloe on re-writing her rulebook for debut solo album 'Move On With The Year' • Interview • DIY Magazine

Before beginning work on her debut solo album, the last time Alice Costelloe had written music without second-guessing herself had been in childhood. Years of playing in the duo Big Deal (her 2010s Transatlantic project with Kacey Underwood) and touring as Superfood’s bassist meant she had grown accustomed to relying on others’ opinions when it came to music. But when the latter band split and Covid hit, she found herself with a golden opportunity to go it alone.

It did, however, mean losing that collective safety net. For the first time, she had to decide whether her instincts were enough. “I did struggle to start with,” Alice admits in earnest on a Zoom call, bookshelves towering behind her. “When I started with this project, I was still [worrying] about what other people were doing and comparing myself to other projects.”

But with only a six-month window in which to make the album, something had to give. “I thought: ‘the only way I’m going to get this done is if I follow my instinct and do whatever comes naturally’,” she explains. “‘I don’t care what everyone else is doing, what could I do here that I like?’”

Making ‘Move On With the Year’ became a period of growth in more ways than one. Coming from a hefty family of creatives (including fashion designer Bella Freud and painter Lucien Freud) meant there was an unspoken pressure to succeed. At the same time, her musical touchstones were largely male, shaping a narrow idea of what an album should be: a grand, capital-C Concept filled with oversized ideas and lyrics. So when it came to her own attempt, she tried to fit that mould: “I wrote some awful songs about London and Greek mythology,” she chuckles. “I had this weird idea that I wasn’t enough and I needed to make it somehow grander, lyrically. I hope no one ever hears the songs I wrote before figuring out what to make this album about. It was like someone posturing on what an album should be.”

When she finally figured out why she’d been struggling, it all made sense. “I’d been comparing myself to these men that weren’t really relevant to my life, even though I love the music they make,” she says. The breakthrough came when she stopped trying to impress anyone, instead choosing to let everything out and writing directly from how she felt. “I’d just said: ‘whatever happens, that’s what this record is going to be’.” That shift produced ‘Anywhere Else’, the album’s opening track. “Once I’d got that down, everything else just came from there.”

“I never would have been able to get this record down if I had been finding [its subjects] as heavy as I had in previous years.”

From there, the record took shape quickly, and it soon became clear that it was more than just a debut album. Instead, it formed a patchwork of childhood memories, shaped by the experience of growing up with a father living with addiction. While EMDR therapy had already helped her process much of it, writing the record allowed her to revisit those memories with distance, bridging the gap between memory and acceptance. “It was about exploring it to the nth degree so I could kind of let it go. I would have never been able to get this record down if I had been finding it as heavy as I had in previous years,” she reflects.

This mindset filters through the record’s lyrics. Take the self-affirmation in ‘How Can I?’ or the album’s final moments, where she quietly announces her departure: “I’ve already done my time / I’m going to walk into the garden / And say my last goodbye”. Slowly but surely, the album became less about individual moments of pain and more about the collective process of letting go and moving on. She realised that while she couldn’t change the past, she could change how she thought about it. She explains: “I didn’t want it to be like a ‘screw you’, like, ‘hate you’. I was coming from a place of ‘I just need to be okay and move past this’.”

At the same time, she began widening her musical frame of reference. “I was consciously listening to albums by women. Cate Le Bon, Weyes Blood… I listened to Joni Mitchell for the first time! I thought: ‘What is going on, that I’ve got to be this age and not listened to a Joni Mitchell record all the way through?’” she exclaims. It was the first step to reducing her impostor syndrome. It also gave her permission to write smaller, quieter songs without feeling like she was being too “feminine” or “vulnerable”.

Then came the instruments: “I’m just so sick of guitar,” she laughs, reflecting on the time. “I’m not bored of all guitar music; I’m bored of me and guitar.” Looking for a way out, she bought a £60 flute on Amazon and taught herself how to play it. It was another way of refusing the habits she’d fallen into. “I was like, ‘I can play a recorder, I’ll be able to play this’. A flute is actually so much harder to play than a recorder!” Encouraged by producer Mike Lindsey, the flute quickly became central to the record, appearing on every track.

The last thing she needed was confidence, a shift that happened in great part thanks to Mike. “He doesn’t need everything to be perfect, so I just instantly felt like it was okay that I play many things at a sort of average level,” she reflects fondly. “Honestly, it’s the first time I’ve not felt like an impostor in a studio.”

Thus, ‘Move On With the Year’ was born. What began as a practical attempt to get an album finished became a farewell to old habits, borrowed voices, and a lesson in self-belief. “As a result of trusting my instinct, things worked out really well.”

‘Move On With the Year’ is out now via Moshi Moshi.

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