I’m in a confessional-style semi-circle with Rose Villas. The group includes Alfie Hackett (vocals, guitar), Charlie Pickens (bass), Harry Cave (guitar), Albie Shaw-White (drums) and Elio Paskin-Hussain (friend, roadie and honorary member).
They come across as incredibly confident and I’m glad to have caught them in their natural environment. After everyone gathers drinks, music is turned off and a round of musical chairs is played. I start recording. Immediately, it feels comfortable and reservations are left at the door.
Poppy: First thing, nice and easy, what are your inspirations?
Alfie: My parents forced me to take lessons but I’m happy about it now.
Charlie: I’d say my dad.
Albie: As a band though, I’d say Fontaines. As inspiration, it was definitely the thing that brought us together.
Charlie: When Dogrel and Skinty Fia came out, it was just so exciting.
This receives unanimous agreement from the others. The band is immediately engaged, buzzing from a full day n the studio.
Poppy: The thing with Fontaines is that, before them, people were saying rock’s a bit dead. Then they came along and suddenly got massive.
Charlie: Five years before that, I hadn’t really heard any new guitar music that was fun. Then there’s been a massive resurgence in it. There’s this whole retroism going back to 90s, 80s, 70s stuff.
Albie: There was a lot of cool music in the 2010s but there wasn’t any guitar-based music. I still think now the music industry is made to give solo artists success and Fontaines were one of the kick-starters for bands.
Harry: The last time it really happened was the noughties with Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party.
Charlie: Guitar music’s been made cool again. We can’t not mention The Lounge Society while we’re here. We should, before Archie crucifies us.
Archie Dewis, drummer of The Lounge Society, is in the next room currently mixing Rose Villas’ latest recordings.
Albie: I mean, we went to Lounge Society shows.
Harry: They were definitely a reason why I started playing guitar. They were our neighbours and they all practised there so I would hear them playing.
Despite being such a young band, Rose Villas have already played The Trades Club and The Puzzle Hall – quite iconic for local venues.
Harry: We try to avoid playing pubs.
Albie: The Trades and The Grayston have been so good to us. There’s a real spirit around here of ‘let’s just give people a go’. There’s some weird music around here. People are happy to put on shows.
Charlie: I think we’ve got quite lucky. Someone who volunteered at The Trades mentioned us to Mal [Campbell, Promotions Manager] and then we got to speak to him.
Albie: That definitely gives us great opportunities but has also influenced our sound.
Poppy: It’s really rare for such a new band to have so many well-known people backing you.
Albie: Archie’s been amazing.
Harry: And Gordon Raphael.
The Strokes’ producer, Gordon Raphael, recently sat in on a Rose Villas recording session.
Albie: He’s just the loveliest bloke. So nice. He gave us good advice. I did some session drumming here for him. In terms of creating music, he knows what he wants. The way that his mind works, he has everything inside and just needs an instrument to get it out.
Charlie: It’s like a curse, like Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino. When you have an image, that’s it, you need it to be perfect.
Poppy: I’ve seen him walking around town wearing a My Little Pony backpack and I think ‘What a man. That’s who produced The Strokes, that incredible first album’. What advice did he give you?
Charlie: It was a lot about authenticity. We talked a lot about social media and how bands build traction through TikTok.
Albie: We would ask what’s the best way to promote and he’d give good advice but he’d say whatever feels natural to you, do that.
Poppy: Do you think social media is a bit of a struggle now for bands?
Charlie: We hate it. It’s awful.
Elio: There needs to be a new way for bands to get famous. I think if you’re someone who’s fairly respectable and understands music, when you see a band on TikTok, you’re not going to respect them as much.
Alfie: Gordon actually said we’d rather focus on getting our sound and then social media.
Poppy: Whenever I see a band online, it feels like some humiliation ritual.
Albie: I mean there is an element to social media where you could argue it’s good for musicians. A band our size back in the day would not have the same opportunities and that is slightly through people seeing our Instagram.
Charlie: It’s such a saturated market for bands now and they’re all doing the same thing. There needs to be a new way. I mean, BBC Introducing is a new-ish thing.
Poppy: Can I ask how recording is going?
All: Amazing.
Albie: Archie Dewis is so, so good. His whole attitude, it makes you want to record. I’m buzzing to come down.
Alfie: It’s really chill because he’s on the same wavelength as us.
Albie: Here he is. The man, the myth, the legend.
Archie Dewis is pulled away from very important work. He’s incredibly polite about it.
Poppy (to Archie): In your opinion, how are Rose Villas?
Archie: I think they are a brilliant band. I think that it’s taken a while to get the first single and EP together but I think it’s going the right way. I think people should be very excited for what they hear from Rose Villas. They might not expect how good it will be.
Poppy (to the band): Do you have a clear genre you see Rose Villas sticking to?
Charlie: A lot of people box themselves into indie-rock and I really hate that. I really don’t like it when people say ‘there’s this new band Rose Villas, they’re a combination of Radiohead, Joy Division…’ I just hate it when people do that.
Poppy: Well, it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, it’s limiting.
Albie: It is limiting. It’s setting expectations and it’s setting someone up for failure. I don’t want people to have read something like that and then listen with that in their mind. That’s the Fontaines bit, that’s the Radiohead bit, like ‘no, we’ve made that’. I’m not going to describe our sound. It’s very subjective. Just come and see.
Poppy: How do Rose Villas go about making a song?
Charlie: Me and Alfie sit at home with an acoustic and fuck about until we find something, then bring it to Albie and Harry. From there, we’ll compose it. Arms Reach came in as a quiet Jeff Buckley sort of song. It became something so different.
Albie: Ego gets involved. You can write parts to a song and you think ‘this is so cool, I’ll bring it to the studio’ and Archie goes ‘just strip it back’.
Poppy: As I mainly do live reviews, I wanted to ask, have you seen any good gigs recently? Or any you’re hoping to see?
Albie: Me and Charlie are going to see English Teacher. I’ve seen them a couple of times. They are just phenomenal. The music they’re creating is so refreshing. Watching them live as a musician, you can’t take your eyes off them.
Charlie: It’s so great to hear these really interesting bass lines. Really inspiring.
Albie: We saw Herbie May at The Trades Club.
Elio: Herbie May’s great.
I remain in the studio for another 20 minutes as Rose Villas and producer Archie Dewis show me what the band have been working on. I have little words to describe how special the music sounds. It flows with ease between rock traditionalism and a highly addictive, youthful energy. It feels like a very honest experimentation and I feel rather honoured to hear it in such a stripped-back state.
Rose Villas have promised music will be released soon. The wait will be painful but worth it. I’d recommend hopping on the bandwagon soon and say you knew them in the early days.
Words by Poppy Cortese
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