2024 looks to be another big year for the incredible Elles Bailey. Four new singles; ‘Enjoy the Ride’, ‘Leave the Light On’, ‘If This is Love’ and the latest, ‘Ballad of a Broken Dream’ has seen Elles push the boundaries even further after the success of her previous album ‘Shining in the Half Light’. Set for release on August 9 through Cooking Vinyl Records, ‘Beneath the Neon Glow’ already has fans anticipating something special once more and with accolades and awards surrounding Bailey in recent years, it seems that many more will follow.
We caught up with an excited Elles after her debut appearance at the recent Glastonbury Festival, where she played to a full Avalon tent before parading around the immense festival grounds taking in the atmosphere and artists on show. Join us as we relive her weekend, talk about the pressures of following up such a successful album and her guilty pleasure at Glasto…
Sean: Elles, great to catch up again. How have you been?
Elles: I’m really good Sean. How are you?
Sean: I’m great and because I know of your fear of spiders I can confirm this interview is 100% spider-free.
Elles: [laughs] Love it!
Sean: It’s hard to believe we last spoke back in April 2022 – so much has happened since then with music releases, tours, mammoth supports and countless awards. And now add to that you have just made your first ever appearance at Glastonbury.
Elles: I mean, my knees hurt like hell. [laughs] It is monstrous. It is huge. Usually when we do a festival, we drive backstage, do the gig, say hello to everyone, drive out, and that’s the festival done. Glastonbury is Glastonbury so not only did I get to attend Glastonbury, I got to play my debut there as well so just that in itself was an experience because I had to sort of pace myself until I did my gig and then I could go full party and I had to. I was quite apprehensive not so much about the gig but just about going to such a monstrous festival and I loved it, I utterly adored it. I didn’t mind being bustled in the crowds, it was such an amazing experience and the problem is now I’ve got the bug, so I’m going to need to figure out a way to play every year just so I can go [laughs].
Sean: Well I saw the photos of you on stage with your backs to the audience and obviously the beautiful Demi (Mariner) there as well with you and with your band. I don’t think they could physically fit any more in that tent. They looked like they were queuing up outside.
Elles: Yeah it was amazing. It’s quite funny because you know you’re playing Glastonbury and you’re playing a great stage at Glastonbury but you hope to goodness people turn up and it’s not just this big empty stage and empty tent and yeah luckily people showed up and got lots of new fans as well which is great and I also saw lots of faces from like all parts of my life, like people from school were there and old house mates and stuff like that were like, “oh let’s go check out Elles see what she sounds like!”
Sean: Well, of course, you would have been able to test the water with some of the new songs from ‘Beneath the Neon Glow’ which I managed to get to listen to last night and it is fantastic! I don’t know why I’m but I’m normally a bit more of an upbeat man but the ballads are just sensational. ‘Turn Off The News’, I’ve just had on again just before we connected. It blows me away! ‘Let it Burn’ is just incredible. Of course I love the pacier ones but those and ‘Silhouette in a Sunset’ are just breath taking. Those three songs just have hit me every time. Incredible. Did you get to test any of the new tracks out? Obviously, you’ve released a few new singles so far.
Elles: Yeah, so we did. So we did three of the four singles that are out. So ‘Enjoy the Ride’, ‘Leave the Light’ and ‘If This Is Love’ all got a play and also ‘1972’ as well, so people got a treat to hear that before it’s actually come out and that’s a really fun festival song to play. It’s feel good, it’s like quite swag and I adore singing ‘Leave the Light On’, that’s such a fun song to play. So, yeah, a few of the songs got a nice little outing and then, you know, songs from all of my records. So it was a fun gig to do. And that’s kind of what the festival set is, you know, it’s your hits, it’s your bangers, and it’s your singles.
Sean: ‘1972’ has got a real funky vibe to it – almost like a funky country americana vibe it’s got to it.
Elles: It’s got the country funk thing going on which is definitely it’s a new genre in country [laughs]. I’ll tell you what, so I’ve said it here, I have never ever liked wah-wah. That is not my jam and we’re doing the album and Joe was like… and Joe’s not really into wah-wah either and he was like, “Should I just put a little bit on it?” and I was like, “Oh I don’t know about that. I’ll allow you the tiniest little moment!” And then he started doing it and i was like, “Shit the bed! I think I like this! Fuck!” And then so we got to the end of the song and I was like, “Go full wah-wah across the whole song!” He was like, “What are you doing? Oh it’s brilliant!” [laughs] So yeah, you heard it here first – I allowed wah-wah on my album.
Sean: [laughs] The one and only time, for one for one album only! Another track that I’m loving is “If This Is Love”. I love that piano and that organ in that track. it’s got that yeah look
Elles: I love that sound, that beautiful tone it’s like a Rolling Stonesy kind of vibe I think, with the piano and in the way that the Rolling Stones uses piano in their records and when I went into my making this album I didn’t want to be confined by just having what we’d have live on stage, which has always been either me playing piano, which is your ballads your ‘Silhouettes In The Sunset’ or your ‘Let It Burn’ – like it’s very simple piano. I can’t do any of the bluesy boogie woogie, like any of that. But I thought, you know what, let’s really make this record about like different key sounds. Well, it’s a piano, a bit of organ, but most of the organ was tracked after the piano, which you know I remember sort of phoning up Johnny and being like, “Yeah well you’re famous for your Hammond playing but get your piano chops up because you’re going to be doing a lot of piano on this record.”
Sean: Does the success of ‘Shining in the Half Light’ make writing the follow-up harder to do? Was there added pressure with ‘Beneath the Neon Glow’?
Elles: Totally and hands down this has been the hardest album to make because the last album, for me I loved it. I loved every second of it. I loved making it, I loved releasing it, I loved touring it. We had three years to do all of that because obviously there was a pandemic so we had a lot of time to get really good at the album and it is such a long story, the ‘Shining in the Half-Light’ story. It was released during a time that was so monumental for the whole world and I know that a lot of people like clung onto music as a way of escaping and I know a lot of people had done that with ‘Shining’ so it felt like I hadn’t just made a great record and I had to better that but I had to sort of you know try and make something that would stand above ‘Shining’ even above all the experiences that we’d had around it, if that makes sense. I really felt the pressure of that because as an artist every every time I make an album I want it to be better than the last one and I loved ‘Shining’ so I was like, “Shit, how am I gonna do this?” And so I just wrote. I treated song writing like a nine to five job – if i wasn’t on the road I was writing at home. My son is in nursery three days a week so Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, if I wasn’t on the road I had song writing sessions and we wrote about forty or fifty songs last year.
Sean: Oh wow. That must have been hard to select the ten that made it on to the album.
Elles: We had fourteen songs in the bag to go into the studio with and record. We managed to record twelve of them and ten of them have gone on the main body of the album but there were songs on there that I was like, “This is a dead set!” I wrote it and I was like, “This is going on the album.” Songs like ‘Turn Off The News’, that was the first one. I was like, this song is going on the record and then I wrote a song called ‘Good News Day’ and I was like, “Great, that’s the title of the album!” And then i wrote and wrote and wrote and by the time we got to picking the songs ‘Good News Day’ didn’t even make it on the record [laughs] and I was like, “Well that’s my album title gone so I’m gonna have to go back to the drawing board!” But yeah I just wrote and I wrote. I didn’t write with any genre in mind because I knew that I was going back in the studio in November with exactly the same team, in exactly the same place to make this new record but I also knew I didn’t want it to sound the same. I wanted to use different instruments and just really explore what else we could do with an album sonically. So yeah, it’s been a lot of fun – I’ve battled with the imposter a lot, I’ve lost my voice for quite a while I was exhausted, I lost my mind a little bit so yeah it’s definitely been a journey of emotions.
Sean: You certainly know how to throw yourself into things and don’t do things by halves – I remember when we spoke a couple of years back you were recovering from flu after a chaotic timeline of shows and record store appearances had nearly exhausted you. You were just about to announce the support shows for Don McLean too back then.
Elles: You certainly have to be committed. I mean right now I feel like I’ve got loads to look forward to with the album coming out and you know with the tour coming up, the record store tour, festivals… still got loads of festivals to go and some really massive ones so it’s all very exciting at the moment but also like quite quiet because for the first time ever I’m not having to do any of the heavy lifting. I’ve got a label behind me, I’ve now got a manager too. I played piano for two hours the other day which was unheard of. I was like, “Well this is great. Is this what it’s like being an artist when you don’t have to be your own manager or be your own label anymore?” [laughs] So do I actually get to play music again.
Sean: You don’t have to go and pick the t-shirts up when they’re ready from the shop and things like that? [laughs]
Elles: Exactly. Actually, I do need to put in the t-shirt order. [laughs] That is the one thing I haven’t done.
Sean: So you are still Head of Merch? [laughs] Let’s touch on the dates because I’ve got the tour dates in front of me. 25th of September right through to the 1st of December when you play Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, which is one of the haunts of one of our reviewers so hopefully we’ll get him in there to cover that show and again you’re doing the record stores in August, which I know our same reviewer went to one of those and said it was just fantastic.
Elles: It’s really nice to strip it back and go out and play these songs in the form that they began so we’re actually doing it slightly bigger than last time. I’m taking Demi as well, so we’ve got me, Joe and Demi – three vocals and two guitars so it should be really fun.
Sean: What a wonderful friend to have singing backing vocals for you as well and her album is great. We’ve emailed a couple of times. I’m trying to line up a chat with her as well at some point because I just love this this new wave of music coming out of the UK at the moment. It is incredible and the world needs to hear it.
Elles: Yeah, do you know what? I was watching Toby Lee at Glastonbury and I’ve known Toby for a long time and watched him. Obviously he’s a phenomenal player and he played a blinder of a set. It was so good and his song writing is on point and his show was flawless. I was like, “You’re 18 years old! Like, what the hell is going on here?” And you know, it just made me think about the bands that we’ve got coming out of the Blues scene at the moment. They really are first class; Brave Rival, The Cinelli Brothers, When Rivers Meet, they are great bands and creating incredible music and I feel proud to be a part of that scene. There are so many amazing bands coming up and making waves so yeah it’s great.
Sean: I’ve got to ask, we need to go back to Glastonbury. What was your guilty pleasures there? Was there anything you caught live that no one would have expected you to go and see?
Elles: I don’t know if you’d have expected it or not. But, I mean, ‘Man, I Feel Like a Woman’ (Shania Twain) was the most insane moment I’ve ever been at a gig. Watching the crowd go so wild, it was insanity. Everyone was on people’s shoulders. You’ve got like 100,000 people, but 50,000 of them are on someone’s shoulders. It was nuts. That was a highlight of the gig festival for me but I was really tired. I did my gig then went and watched Last Dinner Party who were great, I then watched Michael Kiwanuka and then went and caught the Black Pumas and then I had like an hour or so to collect myself before I wanted to go and get a space for Coldplay and I’m a big Coldplay fan. I’ve grown up with them, I went to school with Chris’s siblings. It was Coldplay to me you know, like my upbringing basically so to see them at Glastonbury was pretty special. I thought I’d go back to the stage that I played which is Avalon, which is a really nice stage. You can pack it out but you can also sit outside and be kind of chill and I was like, “I’m
gonna go back and chill and rest my weary weary knees” and Shaznay Lewis was playing. I don’t know if you know Shaznay Lewis – she is one quarter of All Saints and she was slamming All Saints songs and I lost my freaking mind. It was so fun just hearing all of these these songs. I mean I love All Saints and I would love them back together. They were such a cool girl band with great music and great songs. She got Shola Ama out like, ‘You Might Need Somebody’ and so my sitting down resting at Avalon involved me dancing at the front like there was no tomorrow so I didn’t get the rest but that was a real highlight for me.
Sean: [laughs] That’s like me walking past the tent and hearing Gary Barlow on the piano and going, “Oh I’m just popping in for a bit of Take That!”
Elles: I’ll tell you that there were not many people in the tent. I was like, “How are you missing out on this?” The Sugar Babes have just sold out but it’s because people don’t know Shaznay in a way that they know All Saints but she was great and she did her own songs which were amazing as well, so yeah really really enjoyable.
Sean: Thank you so much for your time as always Elles. So excited for the next step of your journey with this album and the tour we’ll definitely get a reviewer somewhere at one of the shows in the UK to cover it and we will beg again to get you to Australia finally.
Elles: You know what? Just just hit up Byron Bluesfest all right? And be like, “Bring Elles Bailey over!” And then if they can bring me over I’ll come to Perth and do a show.
Sean: Done. I’ll hold you to that. [laughs] Thanks again Elles.
Elles: Thanks Sean. Take care. Bye
