Alessi's Ark: The Horse

Friday, 07, Nov 2008 03:55

Take a look at the new video from the hotly-tipped teenage singer-songwriter, here on inthenews.co.uk.

How did someone so young create an album so sophisticated? That's the first question listening to Alessi's Ark, the debut by 18 year-old Londoner Alessi. From the crafted pop of The Horse - one minute 53 seconds of a perfectly executed idea - to Constellations, which uses an elegant orchestral arrangement to carry a lullaby-like love song filled with an easy kind of wisdom, you're left wondering: where did all this come from?

"It all started when I did a zine at 14," says Alessi, who still lives at home with her family in Hammersmith, and who has the voice of someone only just emerging from childhood. "A friend of my dad's who lived in WIlliamsburg in Brooklyn had started a zine called The Curse. I liked it so much that I created my own, called Brain Bulletin, which I did all through secondary school. The first place I distributed it was in a launderette on Shepherd's Bush Road.

The early endeavour went alongside a burgeoning love of music fostered by Alessi's parents. Her mother gave her Songs for Beginners, Graham Nash's classic solo album inspired by his love affair and break-up with Joni Mitchell, when she was 14. "That was a major influence along with other records. A few years later I had to write a song for my music GCSE and it was Glendora, which is on the album. But at that time I had never really thought of being a singer. I sang in the school choir and that was about it. I only really learned the names of the chords when I made this record".

It was MySpace culture that opened Alessi up to the wider possibilities of creating music. Playing for Californian friends in their front rooms and basements, the shows were like a 60s happening and I really enjoyed being there and I started to take it a little more seriously.

Alessi decided to leave school at 16 and pursue a musical career. Her parents supported her decision on the proviso that she return to her studies if nothing happened after a year, so she wrote and recorded a handful of songs and took any bookings that came her way. "I played anywhere and just felt lucky to be asked" she says. "Then it all seemed to happen fast. EMI came on board, and I was asked who I would like to work with. I instantly thought of Mike Mogis, who is in Bright Eyes and has produced a lot of my favourite records. I met him and liked him straight away. Not long after that we started working on the album in Omaha.

Alessi's Ark is filled with an innocent kind of wonder at the world, her voice sounding otherwordly but strong as it carries words filled with visions of nature and magic. Add to this the sweeping strings from a symphony orchestra and a handful of instruments played by Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, two thirds of Bright Eyes and something special emerges.

The words always come first, Alessi remembers writing The Horse. " It's about liking someone and as soon as you show interest in them and try to get close they keep running in front of you, just in view but out of reach."

She wrote one of the album's most epic songs, The Asteroids Collide, when she was only 15. "It's about a long-distance love affair, using the metaphor of asteroids as bodies. I wasn't trying to be cryptic or anything." The album's opener Magic Weather, with its fairytale melody, dream imagery and baroque arrangement, was written in her bedroom a year later. " I was sitting on my bed, facing away from the window, and thinking about my friend John who is in a great band from Boston called Magic Magic. I knew that if I was ever going to make a record, I wanted it to start with this."

Being so young, inspiration comes from books and films as much as it does from her own experiences. "A film like Harold and Maude fills you with ideas - a love affair between an old lady and a boy seems so strange on paper and yet makes such perfect sense in reality. I also love JD Salinger and Edward Gorey.

With influences like these it's no surprise that Alessi able to come up with such a sophisticated body of work.

Alessi's Ark releases The Horse EP in December 8th.