With her debut album ‘The Jester,’ singer/songwriter Wallice plays with genre and the hopes and realities of being a musician.

Stream: ‘The Jester’ – Wallice

Albums can have many intentions.

They can be a collection of songs summing up a period in an artist’s career/life, they can be based around a concept and therefore consumed like a story or film, or they can be an exploration of genre. The Jester, the debut album by Los Angeles singer/songwriter Wallice (released November 15 via Dirty Hit), is compiled of intimate anecdotes and light-heartedly honest expressions of emotions when we feel at our worst. The sound throughout is eclectic, hopping from shout-along forcefulness to hypnotic synth-pop to indie rock. There are touches of grunge, folk, and jazz, and the album concludes with a playful gentleness that takes its ambiance from a circus scene.

This all results in a surprise, if the first time listening, and unpredictability for what’s to come next. If already familiar, it’s an intriguing plunge into genre and how to navigate ambitions and relationships in life.

Someone spilled their beer on me
Wash it off, I rinse and repeat
Be sure to get here a little early
I’m playing right at 7:30
No one knows my name in this crowd
I’ll sing my little nameless heart out
I’m putting on a damn good show
If it’s the last thing I do

I’m just the opener
That’s all I’ll ever be
I’m the opener
Talk right over me

– “The Opener,” Wallice

With The Jester being her first album, Wallice is still relatively new to the scene. “The Opener” is not only an emphatic start to an album, with a build-up that leads to an explosion of energy and emotion, but also a representation of an artist who wants to be bigger than what they currently are. The rise in theatricality throughout the song is the hunger for recognition, which fits into The Jester’s theme of being the centre of attention. There is the literal centre of attention, for example “Look At Me,” “Clown Like Me” and “Curtains to Close,” and the analyzing of oneself which is found in “Heaven Has to Happen.”

“Heaven Has to Happen” was released as a single in August and explores the notion of imposter syndrome that Wallice had been feeling as a support act. There are moments, she explained, where she feels like she doesn’t belong on stage but the determination to succeed is always bubbling within. ‘April fools came late this year, I’m never in on the joke, maybe I’m not meant for this career. Any minute I think it’ll go up in smoke,’ she sings gently at the start over strums of guitar, before confessing in the second verse: ‘I’m praying on the harvest moon, to keep my dreams from drying out.’

In between the verses the instrumentation alternates between heavy crashes, whirly and synthy dreaminess and, towards the end, there’s the integration of a saxophone. This sonic journey encourages us to let our imagination run wild and, in doing so, maybe question our dreams and if they are feasible to achieve. 

In “Look at Me,” the synths are laid-back and dreamy, subtly reminiscent of Julian Casablancas / The Voidz, while “Clown Like Me,” with its catchy guitars and recognizable riff, was written with Albert Hammond Jr. ‘You see, that for clowns like me/ There’s no guarantee you won’t get hurt/ When you kiss the dirt/ When you’re doing it all for free/ I’m spinning out again/ Always freak out when I’m on the tightrope/ I’m holding on to high hopes, that’ll make it to the end’ goes the chorus, again putting life into the context of a circus. 

Sipping a bad beer, had such a bad year
It’s been a rough week, nobody loves me
Nobody loves me enough to tell me
That it’s obvious
What promised beyond me
I feel so tiny, a little bit useless
Maybe I should cool it
Maybe I should cool it
Would be really cool if I could stop being so

Desperate, looking for redemption
Another misconnection
Screaming for attention
Look at me, look at me

– “Look At Me,” Wallice

While the first half of The Jester has is full of enticing bursts of energy (the second track, “Gut Punch Love,” for example, being a blend of dreaminess and feel-good pop), the latter half has more sombre moments. “Manipulate” has a hint of tension, Wallice’s vocals trailing like a shadow in the night, and the chorus is coated with anger. As she explains in a track-by-track for Wonderland, it was written with a ‘male manipulator’ character in her head, thus playing with personas.

“Boring” starts as though strumming the guitar alone in the bedroom, a teenager releasing emotions with an attitude of angst, before rays of sunshine stream through the window. “Sickness,” like “Manipulate” has a moodiness, with the heavy guitars, crashing drums and vocals which are both authoritative and sensuel. In all of these songs, relationships are explored and the different rhythms and complications linked to them.

They are then followed by the typically folk influenced and personal “Deadbeat” and the jazz-infused “Flash In The Pan.”

The Jester is Wallice’s debut album, but she’s been making and releasing music for a long time.

As she explained in her interview with Atwood Magazine in April 2023, “It could look like my success in these last two years came very quickly, but I have been releasing music since I was 18. No one listened until I was 22, so I was really going at it for a while.”

Her EP, Mr Big Shot, released in June last year, is a blunt and humorous account of navigating your early 20s: The battle with expectations, changes in relationships, and the questioning of identity. With The Jester, however, the production is bigger and the sounds more varied. While Mr Big Shot has a rawness that introduces the artist, The Jester is like the adventures that can be had with making music and the ways in which the real and the fictional/theatrical can be blurred. 

If The Jester is inspired by her career so far as a musician, it will be intriguing to hear what direction Wallice takes next. ‘It’s time for the curtains to close/ Hope that you enjoyed the show’ she sings wistfully at the very end, even though we have the impression that the show has only just begun.

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:: stream/purchase The Jester here ::

:: connect with Wallice here ::

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Watch: “The Opener” – Wallice

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 © Monika Oliver

The Jester

an album by Wallice