Alice Mary: The End Of An Era
Last summer we wrote about Alice Mary, who was at the beginning of releasing a batch of new songs she’d been working on during the pandemic, starting with ‘Too Much’. And now as she reaches the end of this particular era, we catch up with Alice and discuss the other three singles she’s released since.
East-London songwriter and producer Alice Mary has been busy since releasing her single ‘Too Much’ and its accompanying performance video. Though Alice hasn’t yet returned to live performance, together with her studio collaborators, Mary has been recording new music and further honing her production skills. Across Instagram and TikTok, Alice has shared behind-the-scenes glimpses of her tracks, performing elements of them on guitar and stripping the layers back to examine each song’s components. In July, Alice Mary released her next single entitled ‘Mystery’.
‘Do I let you in, or shut you out?’
Beginning with the shimmer of Alice’s favoured autoharp, an interesting aspect of ‘Mystery’ is how Mary uses both programmed drums with acoustic drums by Alex Walker. This is true too for bass, with live bass guitar by George Kerridge – both Alex and George would be Alice’s backing band for ‘Too Much’ as well.
Though Alice Mary’s primary instrument is guitar, her latest batch of songs include all manner of keyboard layers. In one of Mary’s production videos for Mystery, she isolates some of her keyboard performances, revealing a haunting and soaring segment that could be the soundtrack to a 1960’s film.
A more obvious keyboard element that jumps out here is the Stevie Wonder-esque clavinet sound Alice uses. Audible right from the first verse, injecting a level of funk into this track that’s both at odds and in harmony with the overall feel, its an utterly inspired production decision.
‘I don’t really like you - you’re just what I’m used to.’
How many songs feature a mixture of live and synthesized instruments, an autoharp, a clavinet, plus a delicate lead vocal like Alice’s? And just when you thought Mystery had given everything it has to offer, Alice Mary performs a guitar solo towards the track’s conclusion too, all wrapped up in a radio-friendly three minutes. Mystery happily defies categorisation by its very definition.
I love the overall slower approach to ‘Surgeon’, the opening moments may well be another autoharp sample that fades in, with Alex Walker bringing in the rest of the production. His more considered drumming on Surgeon is the perfect foundation for Alice Mary’s introductory electric guitar melody, which gives way to her first verse.
‘The Surgeon who loved you sewed you back together, when you made a hole in your skin big enough to grow in, I wonder what you found there. Did you find out what you’re made of? Did you find what you were looking for?’
With Alice Mary’s lyrics never lacking a point, the way Mary sings Surgeon is both soulful and heartbreaking - a genuine attention-focusing aspect of this song. As well as Alice’s lead vocal, her backing vocal touch is real ear candy in the minute descending repetition of, ‘Did you find? Did you find?’ The slight infusion of vocoder is an effect that works well in Alice’s songs, enhancing her melody and gelling with the timbre of her voice.
In a break from Alice Mary’s release schedule, she took to re-examining an old track. ‘Everything To Everyone’ was originally released in 2014 with an accompanying music video that can still be seen on Alice’s YouTube channel. Taking what she’s learnt since in production and mixing, Alice dissected the track and rebuilt it with some additional layers, releasing the new version back in November.
Driven by beats and featuring wordless vocals from Mary, Everything To Everyone is her third attempt to create a song using her bank of self-recorded autoharp samples. Creating these samples herself was no small task. Alice Mary tuned each of the thirty-two strings on her autoharp to a single chord. From here she possibly recorded each individual string, or the chord in its entirety. Since she did this for twenty-four major and minor chords, it’s possible she has 768 or more self-recorded autoharp samples. Or perhaps it’s just twenty-four chord recordings.
Though the differences between this song and the singles featured here are enormous, Alice Mary’s methods to achieve these sounds remain authentically true to her style.
‘They say life’s too short, but it feels so long when you’re living with all your mistakes and the bad things you’ve done.’
Sparked off by reading a series of facts on the internet, ‘Wrong’ has the sound of a closing track on an album fitting of Alice Mary’s final release of this era. In a unique behind-the-scenes video that doesn’t explore her production, Mary revealed some of these facts featured in her lyricism including the longest burning fire, a species of seemingly immortal jellyfish and Ming, the oldest known clam.
Alice again utilises her autoharp samples for Wrong. One of her tech videos shows how she stretched a chord until it was unrecognisable, then took a slice of it after its peak to create a pad keyboard sound. A grounding component of this track is certainly Alex Walker’s drumming, organically recreated from Alice Mary’s programmed demo. There are tiny percussive details that enhance this track too, especially in Wrong’s pre-chorus.
‘Just because nothing’s wrong, doesn’t mean you’re alright.’
During the chorus itself, Mary hides a melodic keyboard instrument with such a similar tone to her voice, it took multiple listens to realise it wasn’t a backing vocal at all. The final moments of the song bring a multitude of layers together, with Alice Mary’s lyric bringing an enlightening and heartfelt end to a really excellent run of music.
In a further exploration of the art by Geraldine Nassieu-Maupas, whose work features as the cover-art for all of these singles, she put together the music video for Wrong under her Enem Studio banner. With production co-credited to Hussain Ali, the stop-motion video sees the twisting and spreading of leaves and other items in time with the music, plus some help from a feline friend.
Through just four singles (as well as a brief throwback), Alice Mary has created a journey with exceptional production, unique songwriting and insightful storytelling. Though this particular adventure may be complete, Alice Mary has already begun recording her next instalment – and I can’t wait to hear it.
Continue reading for our Q&A with Alice Mary. We ask about each of the tracks featured here, her visual collaboration with Enem Studio, the possibility of live performance and her future music. All this and more below!
1. Your latest single 'Wrong' was inspired by tumbling down something of an internet rabbit hole, at what point did you feel that information forming into a musical idea?
I can't really remember. I think I was playing this chord sequence on the guitar that just felt really comfortable to loop round and round – E, A, G#m7 F#m7, E. And then I just loved this idea that there are fires that have been burning since before I was born, something about it makes me feel so small and insignificant, but in a nice way! So the verses sort of wrote themselves but the pre chorus was the hard bit (I think these are always hard).
2. You linked up with Enem Studio for a stop-motion video to this track. Did you present the concept to them, or did they have more artistic freedom with the shoot?
I have been working with Geraldine Nassieu-Maupas of Enem Studio for many years as we are good friends who met in a flatshare. We've talked together a lot about music, art and design so I trust her judgment implicitly, with this video we had discussed the song and so she came up with the concept herself and ran with it. I got to see a couple of demos and then a work in progress before it was finished and was super happy!
3. Back in September, you released 'Surgeon' which is more melancholic than the rest of these singles. If you were to make a music video for that one, what would it look like?
Gosh I'm terrible with the visual side of things! This song is about a tough subject that I chose to address in a simple, almost childlike, way so I suppose I'd go with a cartoon or animation for the video.
4. A lot of your new music features autoharp samples you created. Is sampling your favourite part of production? What's the most enjoyable part of recording and producing your own songs?
I've always been really interested in making sounds that people can't immediately place, whether through cutting up, reversing, stretching or heavily processing. I love that surprise that comes from finding out something isn't what you think it is. I think my favourite part is making interesting sounds and getting them to hang together cohesively with each other, whether through mixing, sound design or arrangement.
5. Is there a part that you dread doing? An aspect of recording that always feels like a hill you have to climb?
Just finishing things really! These songs took a long time to finish. I was too much of a perfectionist but I don't regret it because I'm really happy with the finished product. But I do wonder if they sound laboured, because I did labour over them! Now I'm better at saying 'good enough' because there's a joy in letting something be a bit rougher around the edges. Also I trust my instincts more to know that it’s done and I don't need to try out another 5 ideas.
6. It's great to hear you playing a guitar solo in 'Mystery'. How did that come together? Was it something you composed and rehearsed, or was it pieced together from improvised takes?
Kind of all of those approaches mixed together. I had chosen to use a specific set of notes, inspired by an interview I saw with Josh Homme (Guitar Moves on youtube) talking about a scale he made up. I was also thinking of the octotonic scale which is used in Just by Radiohead, I think I was trying to be more experimental cos I thought my stuff was getting too basic.
Then I had some ideas about the shape I wanted it to take melodically, so going lower on the guitar neck and then coming back up and ending high. So I messed around with my scale, trying to form the overall melodic shape I wanted, and kept the best bits of my noodling. Then I also listened to what I had and heard in my head what I wanted to come next, and then sung that and worked out how to play it.
7. Over the past year you've shared a lot of production videos from the makings of these songs. One of the most fascinating was seeing how you recorded an ambient microphone at the top of the staircase while Alex Walker played. Did that ambient mic change the overall sound of the drums when it came to mix these tracks?
So this recording was for new stuff and not anything featured on my released tracks. I haven't mixed or really progressed with these new recordings yet but I'm really excited to see what we can do with them. Previously we only managed to record with 2 mics on the kit so having 5 was such a luxury and gives us so many more possibilities!
‘Too Much’ single artwork by Géraldine Nassieu-Maupas.
8. This run of singles has featured artwork from Géraldine Nassieu-Maupas all in a uniformed style, which has been your favourite of these and why?
Probably Too Much, I like the bright colours and I feel like this one is a really great visual representation of the song with different things popping out visually just like the sounds kind of jump in and out in the song.
9. For the first single, 'Too Much', you put out a performance video with your band, are there more videos like that to come for the other singles?
Ugh I would love to say yes cos I was so happy with how this turned out, but these things cost money and it’s not really in my budget at the moment.
10. In 2021 you also released a revamped version of your 2014 track 'Everything To Everyone', would you talk us through the changes you made for its re-release?
Yes, my mixing skills have improved so much since 2014 and I've also been enjoying mixing so much I wanted to give this one another shot. I think mostly I tweaked the drums and the bass, adding in bass guitar as well as synth bass. I added a couple of other synths to fill it out, and I put all my reverbs on busses rather than on each individual track. This is my big mixing tip that I didn't know until I knew and then it changed everything!
11. I know you were hesitant to play live last year, how are you feeling about returning to gigging in 2022?
Honestly I'm just not really interested in it. I'm not sure if it’s because I'm out of the habit, and if someone asked me to do a gig I probably would, but I don't feel motivated to go looking for a gig to play. I really love sitting at home and making things, performing just isn't really drawing me at the moment. There's so much ego and anxiety involved in it and I'm relieved to just not go there. But I'm open to this feeling changing!
12. In our last conversation you mentioned you were doing some more recording last summer, did that go ahead as planned? Will there be more music in 2022?
So we got 3 drum tracks down that I'm so happy with but since then I've been swamped with work and life stress. I'm coming out of it now though, so maybe?!
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Alice Mary’s music is available to download and stream in all the usual places.
For more music, visit Alice Mary’s Bandcamp page to purchase copies of her debut EP.
For more information about Alice Mary, including news of upcoming live performances, visit her official website.
Follow Alice Mary on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok @alicemarymusic.
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