wears the trousers magazine

words in edgeways with kelli ali

It’s fair to say that the music industry’s relationship with pop reached its peak just over 10 years ago. Music videos were nothing without a budget of a good £10,000 or more. Singles were a luscious, physical thing with posters, postcards and more non-album tracks than a fan could ever wish for. The charts actually stood for something and were still being fronted by ‘Top Of The Pops’, which anyone under the age of 16 watched religiously. And the icons of our musical affections were untouchable, carefully guarded objects that were forever outside a mere fan’s reach.

Nowadays, it’s a very different story. New acts have to shout the loudest on social networking websites to be heard, and personally spam thousands of potential listeners before any industry mogul or spin doctor considers going near them. If they don’t, then it’s “fuck ‘em, we don’t need them,” and off they go to try it themselves. Probably penniless, but at least they can actually meet their listeners face to face, and forever tell themselves that they were “keeping it real”. What is unusual, though, is to meet an artist who’s had firsthand experience in all the above. It’s even rarer to meet an artist who’s had firsthand experience in all this, but is still actively working and producing new music for a devoted fanbase who’s been with them every step of the way.

Back in 1996, a petite, striking and totally fearsome young woman slouched in a giant rotating dentist’s chair cooing out the seductive ‘6 Underground’, then sat on a toilet in a giant fur coat blasting out ‘Spin Spin Sugar’. She was tattooed, pierced and sported daring undercuts on her head, both terrorising and seducing with a single glance down a camera lens. For a time, she was ‘Top Of The Pops’, NME, Q. She headlined festivals across Europe, and even soundtracked the love scene between Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue in blockbuster movie ‘The Saint’.

For some, these are their last memories of Kelli Ali, former lead singer of ’90s trip-rock indie darlings the Sneaker Pimps before she was “asked to leave” in 1997 so the band could continue without any oestrogen getting in the way of their supposed cause (and thus cutting off their noses to spite their faces in the long run). There is a hell of a lot more to Kelli than just this though. The post-Pimps years have been quite a journey, the ins and outs of which we quickly get down to after swapping a mutual Brummie-twanged “Hi’yorr’rrright?!” as we meet at Rough Trade East for a chat and a cuppa.

“Well, for starters, the internet is the best thing that could have happened to music, it really is,” Kelli states adamantly. “I personally think that everything that’s happening to music is so exciting. When labels used to spend hundreds of thousands on videos etc., that just turns my stomach to think of it now to be honest. I’m thrilled that the onus is back on the artist to be creative. You can’t be a truly creative person if you have to pay a producer thousands of pounds to make a record and everyone’s got to make a video for, like, 300 grand, y’know. I understand. I was part of that.”

While she may have fallen off the radar for more chart-focused music lovers – I call them part-timers – for the fans Kelli picked up during her time with The Sneaker Pimps, a lot has happened. Cherrypicked by Marc Almond to write and duet on a song, she soon went on to work with everyone from Bootsy Collins to Linkin Park while finding her artistic feet. Tigermouth, her first solo album of infectious, sparkly electro-pop appeared in 2002, followed by a darker sophomore effort, Psychic Cat, in 2004. Since then, however, things have been relatively silent. Her label, One Little Indian, hadn’t renewed any kind of deal after Psychic Cat as they simply didn’t know what to expect from her anymore. So with no real reason to stay, Kelli and her partner upped sticks to America in search of inspiration.

Somewhere along this journey two things happened. First, she became a truly independent artist, embracing all the possibilities of the internet and never looking back. Second, she underwent a complete musical rebirth. “I felt really comfortable with electronic music and pop music and I felt I wanted to explore something new. I wanted a new challenge,” Kelli explains. “So I started learning acoustic guitar. I really just wanted a break from everything, and set off travelling to Mexico and California.”

The four years on the move seem to have done her the world of good. Sans trademark nose ring and the angular haircuts of yesteryear, today she’s wrapped up in winter woolies, casual jeans and a leather jacket, looking effortlessly lovely, utterly comfortable in her own skin, and a million miles away from her brief time on the Top 40 A-list. Not only this, her words are full of trustworthy wisdom and, more reassuringly, genuine contentment. “After the split with Sneaker Pimps, I felt really alone and the internet was nowhere near what it is now, so when I started making my own connections with the people who were listening to my own music, I thought it was something really special and something I’d never experienced before. Before, a record label could almost be like a barrier between you and your fans sometimes. So now I make sure I’m really in touch with them.”

Perhaps the most unusual thing about all the eras Kelli’s career has been through is how she has managed to maintain a working relationship with the same record label since day one, which has proved out to be a testament to how strong her new album is. “I took in my demos for Rocking Horse and Derek [Birkett, One Little Indian co-founder and MD], who’s one of my oldest friends, said “I love you to bits but I don’t see how it’s going to work after Psychic Cat.” I just don’t think he was expecting what I played him after I came back from travelling, and I think he was getting tired of me totally changing everything and he just couldn’t see it.” She giggles warmly.

“But this was before I approached Max Richter [producer of Vashti Bunyan's hiatus-slaying comeback, Lookaftering] to produce it. So I thought, well, I’m just going to do this because if Derek is not interested then nobody else will be in this climate either.” A hint of cold reality cracks in Kelli’s voice at this point and when asked if she thinks she is being a bit harsh on herself. “Well, you know what though, it’s true.”

I ask her if the thought of approaching another label even crossed her mind, which is shrugged off confidently. “No, because I decided that I was just going to do this completely the way I wanted then. So I approached Max Richter directly because I just love his work and we organised the whole thing. Recording in Scotland, the artwork…everything ourselves. I later played the final album to Derek, just as a mate. I did not expect him to drop me then be interested in actually putting it out, but I played it and he said, “Yeah, I really like this. Do you want to do a distribution deal?” So I am back on One Little Indian. They’re distributing it through the shops and online and everything, but I’m my own boss.” She grins. “About time really.”

With Kelli so confident that the grass is greener by her own hand, the obvious question is how she feels about the way things were back in 1996, and how they stack up the here and now. “That was a different ball game,” she says thoughtfully. “I think we were one of the most successful bands that One Little Indian had in that year, so they put a lot into and behind Sneaker Pimps. I think that must be what it comes down to at the end of the day. If you start getting the buzz around your release they’ll then decide to push you all the way forward. But what happens is that a lot of artists, then and now, probably feel they’re doing all they can and the record company should be there to motivate them all the way to the top, when the reality is there are so many people making music and unless you have the ability to somehow cut through yourself, the record company, especially independents, have to kinda back the right horse, if you like. They haven’t got an endless supply of money or funds or resources. So I think that’s what it comes down too.”

There’s definitely something to be said for Kelli’s wisdom, and it’s refreshing to hear a coinciding album that positively bubbles with it. Rocking Horse finds Kelli lost in an eerie, warm fairytale of expertly crafted, tender and ethereal guitar ballads and folkish sprinkles of Rhodes, woodwind and strings. Her silky, crystalline purr still has the power to effortlessly elevate goosebumps as she glides through each song. It’s a long way from the almost Minogue-esque pop of her previous solo efforts, and having touched on her own frequent reinventions herself, I ask if this is something she is conscious of, especially considering how vocal her loyal fanbase can be. Could a folk-inspired acoustic album be just too much for them to swallow?

She shakes her head. “I think that because I put so much into every record, and because I’m always really true to my vision and my way of writing, they will always enjoy it because they enjoy ‘me’ and the way I write. So in a way it’s quite good experimenting with genres, because if there’s always a core, or a thread that people can understand and trust, then most of those people, no matter what record I’ve made, will be really supportive, and that is beautiful. So I’m never really worried about that as I feel there’s a trust between me and my listeners. As long as I can keep making the best records I can, I think they’ll keep supporting me.”

She is, however, very aware of the potential pitfalls of too much change, but seems to be taking it all in her stride. “It’s not that I want to make every album consciously different. That’s kinda like suicide in a way for an artist, and I’ve always been heavily criticised for that. Just generally people saying that I haven’t found “myself” or my “sound”, or haven’t created anything with conviction. But none of that really matters to me. What does matter to me is that when I make an album it’s the best that I can make at that point in time, and I suppose not really thinking in terms of commercial success or my profile as an artist, or any of that stuff. I make the record I specifically want to make at that time, and that’s what’s happened every time. Every record I’ve made has been with complete 100% passion for it at the time, absolutely.”

The fact that Rocking Horse silenced any concerns her label may have had about her most dramatic reinvention yet should be enough to convince even the harshest of non-believers that she has indeed produced an album full of conviction here, and whether it be her “sound” or not, it’s certainly an impressive record. Although it won’t be filling any dancefloors anytime soon, it certainly caters for those more introspective moods when you might ordinarily reach for, say, Emilíana Torrini’s Fisherman’s Woman, or even Bat For Lashes’ Fur & Gold. And like those cult successes, Rocking Horse certainly isn’t all sugar and light. There’s plenty of darkness and heartache in there too.

“That was the idea for me in a rocking horse…like a pendulum, between light and dark. That’s what I wanted the album to be. It’s very much about both positive and dark forces, and existence really. So songs like the title track and ‘The Savages’ are very much the dark side of the album, addressing the questions on the darker side of human existence. Are we savages who just think we’re civilised, or just more civilised animals really?”

On a more personal level too, Kelli talks about how first single, ‘One Day At A Time’, has almost become the hinge of the album, sharing her theories on living up to her own expectations as an artist, let alone those of her fans, label or peers. “That really summed up how I felt about everything at that time, about making the album,” she says. “I was worried I’d lost my record label and we were out in the wildernesses camping and really not knowing when we were going to go back, what we were going to do when we got back, and how we were going to survive. I wrote that song to sort of give us hope, that if you just take it one day at a time you’re going to grow and learn.”

Her development and growth as an “independent” artist has certainly been influenced by the pros and cons of the internet. For every fan who she emails back, there is always a question in the back of her head about where they are actually getting her music from, and it is only now that she’s in full control of her work that she has realised the extent of the internet’s impact on artists themselves. “I’m realising now that it’s quite a big thing knowing your record is out on the 24th November, and then you see that, for example, ‘Oh…20,000 have just downloaded Rocking Horse on a file sharing site’ or whatever. I wonder if they’re going to buy it when it actually comes out, y’know?”

She giggles. “I’ve got quite an abstract point of view about making music and money and everything because a lot of my heroes died penniless in awful circumstances. I don’t want it to ever go back to those days or conditions, but it’s sad when people think that downloading songs illegally doesn’t affect the artist because it does, especially the more independent an artist is. It really does affect them.”

So where should the line be drawn between downloading being good exposure for smaller acts and it simply being theft? “I think if you’re responsible and…well, this might sound a bit irresponsible, but if someone’s dead then it doesn’t really matter…” Another giggle cuts through. “They can’t exactly do anything, can they? The copyright only lasts for so many years, etc. So it’s just some corporate giant who is going to get the money anyway. But, if you know the artist is alive or not that wealthy, or especially artists who fund their own records, like I did with Rocking Horse, then that’s where you should think and be a bit more responsible ideally.”

It’s almost hard to believe how the Kelli sat before me would ever have let her younger self become part of the giant, scary pop machine. But as CVs go, hers is indeed a good one, and every experience has contributed to her becoming a wonderfully grounded and thoroughly modern artist. Her humble, honest attitude towards her career and her genuine love of what she does couldn’t be further away from the Sneaker Pimps. There never seems to be any point in asking Kelli anything more juicy about her time with them, and you get the feeling that if someone offered her the chance to go back in time and to carry on with the band, she’d laugh in their face. Kelli has met far too many people and had far too many memorable experiences since then to ever go back. For example, finding an unlikely comrade in Shirley Manson when supporting Garbage on their 2003 UK tour. “That was really good fun,” Kelli smiles. “One Little Indian gave my name to Shirley and she totally wanted to do it. On the first night she came up to me in the dressing room and she was like ‘I hated what the Pimps did to you, how shit are they!?’, and I was surprised she even knew about it, y’know. She was ‘Sisters all the way’, a real comrade.”

As Kelli downs the rest of her coffee, I comment on how nice it is to hear a proper Brummie accent again, from one Midlander to another, having not heard one in about three years, and Kelli instantly adopts the role of ambassador for her hometown. “I’m from Bartley Green, Birmingham, near the centre, but now I’m based in Essex because we’re constantly on the move. But I do go back a lot. I used to hate Birmingham, it used to be really grey and horrible and I dreaded going back, but I love it now. It’s become a really great city, the new shopping centres, bars and everything; it’s just a much cooler place and a lot to do now. I love going back there.”

As we wrap things up, she practically goes weak at the knees when she talks about the future, and lays open an extended invite to the world and relishes in all the possibilities that could happen. Firstly though, she assures us that there won’t be another four-year gap. She’s fired up and striking while the iron is hot. “I’m writing again this winter, and definitely want to play loads for Rocking Horse. Hopefully we’ll be doing some festivals in 2009 and just more music really. I want to write some stuff with the band I’ve been touring with as they’re fantastic, and see how that evolves. I’m also looking at collaborating with people next year again.”

She turns around to compliment the café on their coffee and we head deeper into the store to have a good old browse around. But before the dictaphone and notepad get put away, she has one last thought to add. “The beautiful thing about music is that it’s open to explore, y’know? I love collaborating with people, so I’d never say I’d never join a band again or never do an electro record again. But what’s really important for me now is that even if I’m playing small venues, I just want to be playing. It’s not important to be playing the bigger places anymore. Just to be playing. So, open to offers, baby!”

There’s that giggle again. It’s safe to assume that if she had been asked her to perform right there and then, she’d have been genuinely thrilled to whip out a guitar and play her new songs. And just lovely it would have been too.

Léigh Bartlam

* * *

Before Wears The Trousers let Kelli out of our sight, we sent her on a little mission. Her challenge was to venture around Rough Trade East and pick out 10 CDs that have inspired her over the years, the twist being that at least five of them must be by female artists…

Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
Asthmatic Kitty, 2005

“Do you know Sufjan Stevens?? You’ve got to. Amazing! This album is one of the best albums ever made by anybody! Every time I listen to it I want to know how someone gets to become that much of a genius. You’ll hear it then you’ll just realise what I mean…he’s one of the visionaries of our time! This album in particular is just full of beautiful musical landscapes and so full of charm.”

Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
Sub Pop, 2004

“This is one of the first bands I heard when I got to California who were doing something really special and new with folk. They made me realise how you can really do a lot vocally with acoustic music, like Iron & Wine do a lot with harmonies and other things like that.”

The Stooges, The Stooges
Elektra, 1969

“I grew up listening to The Stooges alone in my bedroom and just remember going over and over this album thinking that if I could ever be in a band as cool as The Stooges that would just make my life complete.”

Betty Davis, Betty Davis
MPC Ltd, 1973

“She was like a tiger, y’know? She was so inspiring in every way because she was just the superbitch and Miles Davis took direction from her! Amazing.”

Patti Smith, Horses
Arista, 1975

“She was an absolute, real rebel who was never, ever afraid to just be herself. This album sums that up perfectly.”

Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Scream
Polydor, 1978

“It didn’t originally feature ‘Hong Kong Garden’, that was an earlier single-only release that was later included on reissues of this album. But yeah, this was another album and song I listened to constantly…breaking up and making up to, loving her voice. I just wanted to be her when I was 16 and heard ‘Hong Kong Garden’. I was quite a punk before the Pimps, and was in a bit of a punk-pop band called The Lumieres. So yeah, big inspiration.”

Suicide, Suicide
Red Star Records, 1977

“Loved this record, it was so inspiring in the sense that it was the first sort of dark electronic music that came just before – and definitely influenced – the whole synth-pop scene. Brilliant! I was used to bands like Sonic Youth who were screaming and really in your face, but Suicide were really laidback and really high on dope, and their message was just as dark but really cool and subdued.”

Björk, Vespertine
One Little Indian, 2001

“Vespertine was an album I bought one Christmas, which is the perfect time to listen to it and it was just magical. Just perfectly creates its own magical little world.”

Vashti Bunyan, Just Another Diamond Day
Phillips, 1969

“Lookaftering was amazing, which Max Richter produced, and of course was her 35 years overdue comeback…but this was produced by Joe Boyd, who’s one of the most inspirational producers in the world, and this was full of beautiful songs. She was one of the first truly unique artists out there because she was just so recognisable. But, she also shows what we spoke about earlier, about certain artists being missed by the corporate radar of their labels who don’t know how to push people like her. Especially at that time! She did have a great following at the time, especially to have been working with Joe Boyd, but she was making all this work which was just falling off the radar and she just became really cynical about the whole business and just said “bye bye”. But it wasn’t until Just Another Diamond Day was re-released and turned a few heads that she realised she was actually missed. Devandra Bernhart became one of her friends around that time and he managed to finally coax her out.”

and finally, because Rough Trade had no Nico or Velvet Underground CDs in stock whatsoever (!)…

Goldfrapp, Felt Mountain
Mute, 2000

“Goldfrapp were on my stereo day in and day out for about a year probably when it came out because I could just listen to it all the time. It was just one of those records that could be on those ‘Best ever albums’ list. I understand her reinventions and need to keep challenging herself, and I do love them for that, and I love her honesty in her opinions…but this is definitely my favourite of theirs.”

* * *

Rocking Horse is out now on One Little Indian Records. Kelli plays The Cameo Sessions at London’s Soho Revue Bar tomorrow night (December 11th). Visit her Myspace or official website for more details.

FREE MP3: Kelli Ali, ‘One Day At A Time‘ [radio edit]

Kelli recording the album in London