Interview Wallice: I’ll Be Your Clown

‘The Opener’ sets the tone perfectly for a record that tackles this conflicting reality head-on. Stepping up to the role of travelling entertainer and taking it back to the earliest version of the artform, Wallice’s protagonist is a tragi-comic figure who’s self-aware yet defiant; “They’re a sad, rundown jester but who still has a lot of ambition and believes in themselves, so it’s not just one or the other,” she notes. They’re also, given the recent Joker Folié a Deux film, not alone in the current cultural court. “And then also I’ve seen recently that clown-core is coming back as an aesthetic. So many photoshoots have ruffles and face paint and it’s like, ‘I really have been planning this for ages!’” Wallice sighs. “But now it seems like I’m on trend…”

She might be up against Gaga for 2024’s best musical harlequin, but Wallice’s tale is one specific to the exact life and career point she finds herself in. Having first broken through in 2020 with debut single ‘Punching Bag’ and viral hit ‘23’, the years in between have been a seesaw of excitement and struggle – surging ahead of the pack one minute, and watching her peers come up from behind the next. Both on record and in conversation, the singer is candid about the toll these comparisons can take. “Especially online, you see [artists’] best achievements every week and it’s like, ‘Ugh I’m not doing ANYTHING this year because my album’s still being finished’,” she says. ‘Look At Me’ repeats its title in a whisper, before declaring: “My prime is behind me / I feel so tiny”.

This acute recognition of the passing of time also writes itself across ‘The Jester’ as Wallice wrestles with an industry where youth remains the highest currency. ‘Heaven Has To Happen’ mixes imposter syndrome with fears of missing her shot, while ‘Flash In The Pan’ tackles a doomed relationship but also nods to these neuroses. “I’m 26 now and it’s my debut album, and it’s really easy to compare yourself to people – even beabadoobee who’s on my label, she put out her first music when she was 18,” Wallice notes. “In the scope of the world, I don’t feel old. But when I’m near a lot of 22 or 24 year olds who are also in music and, on paper, more successful, it’s hard thinking I wish I was where I am four years ago. But the album wouldn’t have been as good if I’d made it four years ago, so I’m very aware of trying not to think I’m old because I’m not.”

In among that picture are moments that push the singer into notable new directions. Defying ‘The Opener’’s own misgivings (“I don’t know how to sing about sex / Those parts of my life don’t intersect”), on the lusty ‘I Want U Yesterday’ she pairs Talking Heads-nodding pop with lyrics about ripping a potential lover open “like a gift bag”. To get in the zone, she channelled the spice of a fellow Californian. “I kept coming up with boring things, but then my producer David had these writing prompts that suggested pretending to write as another artist,” she laughs, “so I did Remi Wolf. There’s a line that goes, ‘horny for your red flags’, and then after I wrote that, a couple of months later she put out ‘Toro’ where she sings about a matador, so I was psychic!”

Another musical spirit guide, meanwhile, crops up in physical form. One listen to the fizzing guitar lines of ‘Clown Like Me’ and it could be the work of only one indie hero. “David showed the song to his friend who was like, ‘Honestly dude, I would tell you you could never put that out because it sounds like an Albert Hammond Jr rip-off if it wasn’t him playing’,” Wallice laughs. “He has such a unique, recognisable way of playing guitar that’s like, one of the most influential things of the last 20 years. And he’s so sweet and humble. He’d be like, ‘That one sucked’ and it would be literally the best guitar I’ve ever heard.”

It’s easy to see why The Strokes’ axeman would want to stamp his co-sign on ‘The Jester’. Channelling alternative heroes and pop smarts in a way that should rightfully leapfrog her over a bunch of the young whippersnappers she’s had her eye on, it comes good on the promise that Wallice has spent the last three years nurturing. She’s hoping that, much like ‘23’ now seems like an endearing vignette in the rearview mirror, her future self sees this debut in the same way. “I hope I will continue to grow to – like Charli says,” she chuckles, “a place of commercial success, and that I can look back and be like, ‘Oh that’s so funny that I was so worried’. It’s really cool having music that I write as these markers in my age. So when I look back at this album, I hope I’ll be like, ‘I was so young, why was I stressing?’”

‘The Jester’ is out now via Dirty Hit.

Tags: Features, Interviews, From The Magazine, November 2024, Wallice