Jun 2011

There aren't many new musicians who can harness the elemental rock'n'roll soul of both Ike and Tina and Jimi and Janis. Alice Gold though, comes bloody close, a powerful pull of both masculine and feminine laced together with straight out Patti Smith punk spirit and a keen pop ear. Gold by name and gold by nature, there's an immense warmth in Alice's sound and lyrics.

Alice's debut album, 'Seven Rainbows', is made up of dense, complex atmospherics and an effortless melodic sophistication, it was completed in just 22 short days with no money from any record label. Even so, the quality in the songs was and is obvious, so much so that labels were queuing up for the rights to release it. A deal with Fiction Records allowed Alice to put together the live band she had always dreamed of: far from session musician blandness, the noise they make is a reflection of the records Alice has always loved: Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and Jefferson Airplane; classic songwriting, energetic and rough-around-the-edges. "I definitely write pop songs," Alice says. "But I'm inspired just as much by leftfield stuff, rock and roll and psychedelia. Basically, I love Janis Joplin but I've got a crush on Alicia Keys." An important part of the Alice Gold sound comes in the shape of producer Dan Carey. This is a man whose recording credits speak for themselves, featuring as they do everyone from Franz Ferdinand to Hot Chip to La Roux to Lily Allen to Kylie (with whom he co-wrote 'Slow'). "We just clicked," Alice says. "I basically hounded Dan for six months to make room in his diary and told him he had to pay for it all too 'cos I was broke. But he did it. I played the stripped down tracks to Dan in his studio and explained the mad band in my head. He came up with these killer bass lines and the sound I was looking for began."