Dream Wife at Chalk, Brighton: Gig Preview

“We are coming home baby.”

Punk three-piece Dream Wife formed while studying at Brighton University in 2014, when bassist Bella Podpadec and lead singer Rakel Mjöll decided to start a group on a unexpected drunken night.

Bella said: “We formed the band while we were studying at Brighton University so all of the early band memories are in Brighton.

“It is a really sweet city, we were all studying different subjects at the Grand Parade and I lived with Rakel. We were both from Somerset so we moved to Brighton at the same time. The idea for the band formed on a night out that I went with Racquel to the Haunt.

“The idea was to have a sober night out but Raquel bought us Jager bombs and the rest is history”

The Haunt, now known as Chalk, will be the venue to host Dream Wife’s return gig on Friday, April 1.

The show makes up an 18-date UK tour for the band, the first time the group have been out on the road in more than two years.

Bella said on returning to live music: “I think it's going to be really emotional, it's going to be really powerful. It’s been a unique and challenging time in the world since then.

“Live music as an industry has ground to a halt for a long time. I think there is something which we fundamentally need as humans to come together and experience stuff collectively

"I think live music is a really amazing way of being able to experience things in groups. We are inherently social animals and we have been denied so much of our social experience. It’s going to be really powerful to hold that space and feel that energy.

“I also think it’s going to be a shock to the system. At the moment I'm on the brink of feeling utterly overwhelmed and also unbelievably excited.”

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dream Wife were unable to tour their second album – So When You Gonna… – which they released in July 2020.

Bella said: “There was a certain level of irony releasing an album that is pretty much about the live show, when live shows can’t happen.

“The first single of the album – Sports – came out the day that sports were cancelled.

“There was a slight, bitter funniness about the whole thing. It required a lot of mental gymnastics, at the start of the year we thought we were going to be touring constantly. Then there had to be a readjustment in the brain, which was not a singular experience at all.

“But in some ways it was really interesting to experience that and go through the emotions of it without public facing. It was really good to lay down some routes, we have been doing this band for a little while, probably for about five years at this point. And we had just been touring all the time, it was nice to be able to just sit with those songs, we were really pleased with those recordings and it was cool that they got to live a life that they lived.”

Bella believes there is something quite special about the two-year gap between the last record and touring again.

She explained: “I think a real sadness about it is that some of the songs on the album won’t ever get played live. When it’s a live show the songs are changing every single night, we always had an idea of a recording existing like a snapshot moment in time. Whereas a song is kind of this active thing which is constantly changing every time you play it.

"Maybe there is something beautiful about those songs existing as a time capsule, maybe they get to be what they are in that space.

"Marta Salogni produced the album, and it was really amazing to get to work with her and understand her process in a playful safe environment. There's something really cool about learning to respect those recordings and allowing those songs just to exist as that.

"With the first album [Dream Wife], I didn't really respect those recordings about what we did off the back of releasing that. It’s maybe given us a greater understanding of what music is and what role it can play.”

Producer Marta Salogni (Bjork, FKA Twigs) helped the band to develop a fuller spectrum of emotions on their second album – expanding from their gritty, kick-the-door-down rock and roll of their self-titled debut.

Bella said: “We were trying to lean into this full spectrum of emotion, the complexities of what it takes to be a feeling human. We were keen not to deny any of them. It kind of felt rebellious in its own right to lean into these tender feelings.

“But it’s all a journey, I think the new stuff we are writing, which feels really alive and exciting, are the sexy party bangers.

"We wrote all these sad songs during lockdown and so as we play some live shows we realise that we are a party band and we like to write really fast bangers. So it's exciting leaning back into these raw, raucous energy. It’s cool to remember that it is really fun and exciting about what we do.”

Dream Wife gig’s can be notoriously ‘rowdy, sweaty affairs’, and the band’s bassist is excited for the three-piece to return to the stage.

Bella said: “It is what it is live, that’s where it gets to exist in its purest form. There's something so present and alive about live music and there’s that direct interface with an audience which is really exciting.

“We toured pretty extensively before we ever released anything, so in a way this band was built as a live band. So it’s great to be able to get back to what we do best.

“It’s going to be a sweaty raucous good time.”

To buy tickets for the show click here

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