Los Angeles singer-songwriter Wallice is full of wit. Since she broke out at the beginning of the decade with effervescent singles like “Punching Bag” and “23”, her debut album has been long awaited. We’ve now been blessed with the work, entitled The Jester, and it’s a sublime, resonant and casually meticulous work.

Shared via revered imprint Dirty Hit, the record is brilliantly written; funny, vivid, and self-centred through the lens of humility, Wallice questions herself and the world around her through a series of pain-staking scenarios and rip-roaring one liners. Sonically tackling jazzy, folky and indie-driven tendencies, the album is an unassuming and caring listen, well-worth revisiting and allowing yourself to be comfortable within.

Curious as ever, Wonderland wanted to know more, and so asked Wallice to dissect her new opus, track-by-track.

Listen to The Jester…

Read the analysis…

“The Opener”
I started fragments of this song while touring opening for The 1975 in Australia and Asia last year. It was an amazing experience and time of my life but at the same time I dream of being the headliner and not just the opener that the crowd is talking over. I showed my friend David Marinelli, who I’ve worked on all my music with, all the lyrical ideas I had but thought there were too many, but we decided to lean into it each idea and make it an almost painfully long (for this day and age) song. 

“Gut Punch Love”
This song is about a relationship my mother had when she was younger. She describes it as probably the one true love of her life. She was engaged to a man but then he went missing and she never heard from him again until years later his family said his body was found in the river in Osaka. It’s a tragic story but I also think it is very beautiful. 

“The Hardest Working Man Alive“
I would usually describe myself as a lazy and relaxed person. I also think that being an artist is such a lucky job because it doesn’t really feel like work (to me at least.) So when I have a session or tour or “have to work” I can’t believe it’s considered work (in comparison to service industry or being in healthcare etc). So this song is me poking fun at being “the hardest working man alive”. 

“Hurry Babe”
We wrote this song with Charlie Martin from Hovvdy. I am usually late to most things (terrible quality of myself I know) so I was probably 10 or 20 minutes late to this session and that’s what sparked the song idea.
 
“Look At Me” 
I completely forgot that I wrote this song until a year later we came across the bounce from the day and it was really fun. It fit into the theme of The Jester and wanting to be the centre of attention. It’s also very different to the rest of the album it’s a little more electronic compared to indie rock. 

“I Want You Yesterday” 
This is one of my favourite songs from the album. It was the first time working with Mikey Freedom Hart who we ended up bringing on as a co-executive producer on the album. 

“Sickness”
This song lived many lives before this iteration. I wrote this song in London but didn’t like the feel of it, it was almost too Dad Rock but I loved it still. So we made a couple more versions before thinking of a shoegaze inspired track and it was a new tonethat hadn’t been explored on the album yet. 

“Boring”
This was my first session working with Starsmith. It feels a bit more pop than I’m used to/usually write, but I ended up loving it. Lyrically, Boring references being in what someone might call a “boring” relationship. I’ve been with my partner for 10 years and we live together and love staying in watching shows or playing games and we don’t go out too much, which could be boring to some people but I love it. 

“Manipulate”
I wrote this with a “male manipulator” character in mind in a role reversal in dating. This song is sonically obviously inspired by my favourite band of all time Radiohead, which I reference being a Radiohead ripoff in an earlier song on the album “The Opener”. 

“Deadbeat”
Day 2 of working with Starsmith we got a little deeper. You can probably infer who this song could be about but it’s hard for me to talk about.

“Clown Like Me”
This was such an exciting song because we worked with Albert Hammond Jr, who I’ve been a fan of forever. He has such an iconic sound to his guitar playing that I was honored to have it be apart of my album. We made the instrumental first and then I wrote to it following the themes of The Jester and being this low level entertainer doing anything for praise and holding onto hope that I will “make it”. 

“Flash In The Pan”
The focus track of the album! Written with Sam Evian on a rainy day in LA, we were just seeing what came of the day and it feels like a classic 70s Carole King love song. We recorded the majority of this track at Diamond Mine in Long Island City where they record everything to tape. It gave it this warm classic sound the song was searching for. Adding in horns and non-traditional rock instruments (orchestral strings and big band horns) was also a goal of mine this album overall, so we have trumpet and saxophone and it just feels so good to listen to. 

“Heaven Has To Happen”
This was the first track I started writing for this album. It was created on April fools 2022 which lead to the lyric “April fools came late this year”. I was fresh off my first tour opening for Still Woozy, which was another great and lucky experience I’ve had in my career. I was having imposter syndrome as an artist not feeling deserving of these great opportunities especially so early in my career, and that’s where the song started. We made it with Ethan Gruska, who I am a huge fan of, and it was just a 90-second demo for over a year. I had a hard time finishing because I loved it so much I wasn’t sure where it should go to next. There is also a line “a jester in another life” that inspired me to have an album called The Jester and to build off of it from there. 


“Curtains To Close”
I knew “The Opener” was going to be the first song of the album and in an almost concept-album style, I wanted there to be a clear ending to the album. I took this idea of a hypothetical circus clown’s life, as a metaphor for being a musician, and aimed to close out the album with it. I hadn’t written a waltz before so I thought this 3/4 was very fitting for a circus clown. I was also able to have the last line of the album be “hope that you enjoyed the show” in a very operatic way with a marching drum snare to send us off. A bit campy and exactly what The Jester needed to close the show.