In conversation with Alice Jane
- Rebecca Tregaskis
- May 19
- 6 min read
by Rebecca Tregaskis
Alice Jane is set to release her debut EP Baby Teeth this Friday. Written over a period of 3 years, Alice Jane started winding out her music on streaming platforms in February. Now at the start of summer the full project is just a few days away from an audience.
Alice Jane started her musical journey from a young age ‘I was forced to do musical theater as a kid. I have three older sisters and my mum made us all do it because she thought it would give us a bit of confidence. And I loved that,’ she retold. After dropping out of her psychology degree at university Alice Jane moved back in with her parents but had moved away from where she grew up ‘the only thing I really had was a piano.’ Eventually going back to uni she decided to get a degree in music ‘my mum forced me to get a degree and then I decided to get a degree in music for zero reason because that was so unhelpful but it opened me up to so many different kinds of music.’
Talking about her musical inspirations within the indie scene she joked ‘The teenage years hit me hard. I got into really sad music. I love Phoebe Bridgers, Julia Jacklin, Sam Fender. I’m a big Radiohead fan. That sort of very indie sad music but there is a big focus on instrumental which I quite like…I’m more drawn to indie music to listen to so naturally I write more that way.’
The EP has been a long time in the making. Working as an independent artist and having to re-record to make the project happen a lot of work has been put into this. ‘After recording I really wanted to get it out because it's like a service who worked so hard and brought so much joy to the project. I’ve really tried hard to get people to hear it because rerecording it was so special,’ Alice tells me. Talking about learning to trust herself in music and sticking to her creative vision in the EP Alice stated ‘I think if you're not making music that you genuinely love and genuinely would listen to, what's the point in making it?’
Echo Music Magazine: You released your first project Baby Teeth in February - what was it like to release something you created?
It felt strange but also quite disappointing. I thought I’d wake up and feel like a completely different person but I still had to get up and go to work and get on. I’m quite lucky because I don’t work in music at all and I have a company and boss that doesn't care that I do it and encourages it. In that sense it was quite cool that I went into the office and felt a bit famous like ‘oh my god, I have a thing!’ But other than that my life doesn’t feel that different. Apart from the fact it’s been years of me trying to explain my music to people and now I can just be like ‘this is it.’ Which I think is a very different experience as a musician, going from unreleased to released and how you carry yourself.
In terms of your creative process, what do you really value in that?
My main love is song writing. For a long time I didn’t want to be an artist myself, I wanted to be a song writer and write for other people. But then I was writing songs I got quite connected to and didn’t want to give it to someone else. That’s why I started doing my own artist project. So anything that can get me back to songwriting and those roots is a big thing for me. All the promoting, the TikTok and social media doesn’t come naturally to me so any time I really just get to the thing I love doing is a massive deal to me.
Your songwriting is very confessional, how is it letting an audience in on that?
I actually wrote this project three years ago so while there’s so much of me in those songs I actually feel quite detached from it. I went to a Phoebe Bridgers concert and she said ‘it’s so liberating to be able to sing these songs knowing this isn’t how I’m feeling now because I wrote them so long ago’. Because this project took so long to come out it doesn’t feel too personal now. The only thing that does get me is when my Grandma is concerned about me - she’ll send me texts like ‘this song is a little sad.’ But I grew up in a very open family and a women-heavy family so it’s always been a lot of talking about feelings. So I never get scared to express myself.
Your debut EP is releasing at the end of this month. Can you tell me about the process?
I actually tried to record this whole EP, like a year and a half ago and it all went awful. So it took me a while to fall in love with the project again. It's very centred around the song, Baby Teeth which is about growing up. I grew up with older sisters so I spent my whole life wanting to be older than I was. Then I got to the ages that I wanted to be and I was like, ‘oh, I don't want to do this anymore.’ I think, I'll never not feel that way…It's sort of that introspective feeling where there's no way I can do over any decision I've made. It's a really daunting feeling to have and a lot of people do have it. So I centred the whole EP around that feeling.
It's been a long process to get it out but I'm glad I stuck with it. I could have gone in a new direction and written a whole new thing. When the whole process went wrong the first time, it took a lot of the love away from it for me. So learning to stop feeling so sorry for myself which is actually a song on the EP called Eskimo. It's actually really randomly named after a Boy News World episode. During COVID I binge watched all of it for no reason. There’s this whole episode, which basically is about standing in the way of your own happiness. I really liked the metaphor so I stole it and then wrote the song.
I showed it to so many people and so many tutors and literally every single person was like,’ I don't get it.’ But I stuck by my guns because I was like, ‘no, this means a lot to me’. I could have just given up at that point and stood in the way of things I actually really enjoy. In a weird way I’m proud of myself for not letting that affect the project in itself, because I'm quite proud of the project.
How do you think your EP has shaped you as an artist?
I am inherently a lazy person…but it’s really made me want to try. It helps that I genuinely believe in the project and most of the feedback I’ve got has been positive. It’s made me want to try. Before when I would post on tiktok it would be once a month and it would take me ages to upload because I would be psyching myself out about it. Whereas now I’m editing tiktoks in the loo at work just trying to get something out. It’s made me less embarrassed to try at something even if it doesn’t work out. But I hope it does because I have so many things I want to write and so many things I want to do that I hope it leads into something more.
What’s next after the EP release?
I have a few small acoustic shows lined up. I want to do a proper debut headline show. I’m aiming for the end of summer. I’ve never played a show with a full band so I’d want to do that because it speaks to the music more. So nothing planned at the moment but lots of ideas in my head.
Check out Alice Jane’s debut EP Baby Teeth released this Friday
You can listen to Alice Jane’s released singles Baby Teeth and White Noise on Spotify now
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