Alice Ivy’s sound is so hard to pinpoint, I’d not be doing it justice by trying to put it into words. Electronic... soul... pop... kinda? And then there’s the fact that she flipped Luca Brasi’s Clothes I Slept In recently, making it virtually unrecognisable from the punky original.
Truth
Annika: Alright, so, I speak fluent German, which is something that a lot of people don’t know because I don’t really like to talk about it a lot… because, I dunno, I just feel like German is a great language but it’s not, like… I wish it was French or something. No offense to German, but it’s not a lovely sounding language. But yeah, German was my first language. My parents came out to Australia like 30 years ago and um… they started their lives here and I was born two years after that, and so I grew up having German as my first language.
Uppy: Wow!
A: And that was pretty interesting. My parents did German Christmas and we’d fly home to Germany and visit my family all the time and we’d just speak German at home. At the time… my parents could speak okay English but it wasn’t like, AMAZING English, so I guess we were just speaking German at home and that was totally normal. And then I got to kindergarten and I literally could not speak a word of English.
U: Hahaha you must’ve been like, ‘crap.’
A: So funny. I dunno, like, I’m pretty Australian now. I… it’s funny. So I got into kindergarten and I had to pick up English which is interesting. I do still speak German sometimes at home but generally it’s English now, but I’ve still got family – my whole family’s in Germany so I travel back to Germany all the time to visit them whenever I have the money and time off from touring and stuff like that.
U: That’s so interesting! So where in Germany are your parents from?
A: My parents are from north Germany. My dad comes from this tiny, tiny town called Hassendorf. I was there earlier this year actually, I was there in June. I just came back from a really big writing trip, I went to the UK and the States and did a bunch of writing, but then I took ten days off to go and hang out with my grandma in Germany.
U: That’s so nice.
A: Which is really cool, when you’ve got the time, it’s sooo important to give time to your family. Like, who gives a crap about money and all that stuff – the most important thing about life is time, and you don’t know how much time anyone has. You just have to do it. So I took ten days off and kicked it with my grandma in Germany which was so sick. And I visited my dad’s [town], no one’s living there any more but there’s like old barnhouses with like 1604 dated on it and NOTHING there.
U: Wowww.
A: My mum’s from this small town called Oldenburg, which is pretty close to Bremen. It’s about two hours from Hamburg. They’re all small northern German cities, so that’s where they came out from. My dad came out from this tiny farming village and my mum came from a reasonable sized town but yeah, nothing too big. So generally when I go to Germany, I hang out in north Germany and I’ve got family in Hamburg – which is a really really cool city, actually, there’s lots of really cool music things happening there.
U: That’s awesome, and especially because they’re from smaller towns, you must get this sort of scenic, full-on, removed-from-Australia experience.
A: It’s beautiful, my grandma lives really close to this really big forest, and especially in winter time. This time I was here in summer – and European summers are amazing, you just hang out in the park and you don’t get sunburnt! It’s just easygoing compared to here – and in wintertime, all the lakes freeze over when it snows, you can just go ice-skating on the lakes and stuff!
U: It’s like a fairytale!
A: Around Christmas time, they take Christmas to a whole new level in Germany! They have all these little Christmas markets, Germany’s sick.
U: So going back to what you were saying right at the beginning, about how German’s not exactly a soft language, it’s kind of guttural; are you confident speaking German now?
A: Yeah, I’m confident speaking German, when I’m in Germany I literally switch off speaking English and speak German for ten days. It’s pretty confident and fluent which is awesome, but I’m yet to see if that’ll help me in music I guess. I’ve played shows in Germany but that was a very long time ago, just as I was starting up Alice Ivy, I set up my own shows in Germany and did it for fun and just played these trashy clubs in Germany and that was really fun.
Truth
A: I have the most ENORMOUS fear of snakes. Like, reptiles I guess, but snakes are a WHOLE next level. My mum has the biggest fear of snakes, and when I was 12 there are photos of me at my parents’ house with this giant python around my neck. Fully hanging out and I was fine. But I think it was just a year later, something must’ve happened. Like, I’ve had experiences where it’s scared me a little bit but a year after that, I can’t deal. I can’t be in the same room as snakes. Like we played a show in Darwin last year, my manager and my partner came with me and we decided it would be a funny idea to go to a crocodile farm and see what it’s like.
U: Oh, is that the one in the middle of the city centre? Because I think I walked past that when I was there!
A: Yeah! And people were holding tiny little crocodiles, baby crocodiles, and they were like, ‘c’mon, just hold it, it’s just chillin’ and there are photos of me near, my manager’s just holding it and I’m just absolutely shitting myself. I can’t deal with them. And giant pythons? The whole idea of getting squished to death just scares me so much.
U: Oh yeah, that’s not a way to go.
A: I also have this memory of… so my parents used to always take us to Europe to visit the family and on the way back we’d do a stopover. Back in the day, and maybe it still is, but it worked out to be cheaper. So we ended up staying in Singapore and Bali and doing these stopovers. And one time we went to the Singapore Zoo.
U: It’s an EPIC zoo.
A: The night zoo is fully insane! And I have this horrible memory – you know how they do shows? And they do like a leopard show, thinking about it now it’s horrible, I would never go to something like that now. But back then, it’s like acceptable. Anyway I have this memory of watching this leopard show, and the show getting interrupted and my whole family and I were sitting on this wooden bench. Then the keepers were walking past us and trying to reach underneath us?
U: Ohhh…
A: Then they opened up this little door and started pulling out this giant, giant python, that was literally sitting underneath us. And my mum just SCREAMED because she can’t deal with snakes and I was like, oh my god. I have this memory of being just SO scared. And how dare you do that to someone?! That’s so horrible.
U: Yeah, like keep it in a different spot, don’t keep it UNDER the guests!
A: People love to keep them as pets and stuff like that, but the thought of them just being in a tank hanging out next to you freaks me out so much. We were talking about it on the Vera Blue tour and Kira Puru’s partner has a pet snake and Kira Puru walked into sound check one day and was like, ‘hey, check out this snake bite! I went to feed it and it bit my hand’. And I’m like, HOLY SHIT how is that possible.
U: And I bet she’s just chill about it! I love her, she’s sooo chill.
A: She’s super chill. Not even bothered and I was so scared.
U: I don’t have a fear of snakes; they just creep me out. They’re just a bit gross.
A: They’re a little bit gross.
U: I would much prefer fluffy little rodents, I love cats and dogs and foxes and everything but, basically.
A: Yeah, I dunno. I’m not sure. We just don’t deal. We’re not a team. I can’t handle snakes.
U: And you haven’t had to come across one in the bush or anything, right?
A: Actually, yeah. I forgot about this story. On my way to Panama Music Festival which is in rural Tassie, just about an hour out of Launceston in this beautiful forest. It’s awesome – it’s probably one of the best festivals I’ve played in Australia. Everything’s local, lowkey. And we’re driving on the way in and I turn to my tour manager, it was this really bumpy dirt road and I looked and saw this giant black snake slowly slither across the road.
U: Ugh.
A: And I just like, just in time, was like ‘oh my god is that a s—‘ and we quickly drove over it and I feel horrible about it, but she was like ‘oh my god that was a snake, I didn’t see it!’ And we’re freaking out. We got to the festival and we drove back to see if it was okay, and it was fine. It was gone! So that was my Snake-Into-Panama story. So we went into the festival and we went, ‘oh my god there was this massive snake up the road, it was so big’ and everyone was so chill about it, like, ‘oh yeah, happens like five times a day’!
Lie
A: So I grew up in Geelong right, there were some cool clubs. There was this amazing pub called the National Hotel, and unfortunately this is now shut. It shut when I turned 19 or something, but the National Hotel was the go-to. Everyone went there, it was the place to be. So I… managed to use a fake ID for two years. I got my fake ID when I was 16, but the funny thing about the fake ID is that it was expired in 1988.
U: Whattt. Of who?
A: I don’t remember who, I got it from a friend of a friend so it wasn’t a friend of mine. My friend was like, ‘hey I have this ID, do you want it?’ I have no idea who the person was. The license looked ridiculously old because it expired in ’88! So I don’t know how old that would’ve made me! But I used it for two years getting in EVERYWHERE, which is so funny because I used to go to King Gizzard when they played at the National Hotel. It was just the place everyone went to! And then like, the other clubs had Bag Raiders, when I was like 17, underage. All these bands used to come through and it used to be this thing on the weekend – the cool thing to do. ‘Are you gonna see that band?!’ So I managed to use this fake ID for TWO years. I don’t know how I managed to do that.
U: So you’re like 16 or 17, and they think you’re like 35?
A: Yeahh.
U: Whaaat even.
A: Which is hilarious because look at me now! I’m 25!
U: I mean, you don’t look 35 now! [laughs]
A: I’ve got stories of telling my parents like, I was going to these shows. They’re pretty chilled out but they’d be like, ‘if it’s 11pm, we’re picking you up. You have to go.’ They had no idea I had this fake ID. So I’d be like, ‘Oh mum, Bag Raiders are playing here, I really wanna go, is that okay?’ and they’d be like, ‘thank you for telling me, at least you’re not gonna sneak out and do it.’
U: Except you’re sneaking IN!
A: ‘Your curfew is 11pm, you have to be there or we’ll never allow you to do this again.’ So it was this truth thing? Smart parent tactic, but I wiggled my way out of it. Like King Gizzard wouldn’t have even started at 11pm, so my parents are waiting outside. I’m like, ‘damn, alright cool. I’ll be back,’ to my friends, so I went home. ‘Good night! Thanks for doing this!’ Went out the window five minutes later, jumped out, straight back to the bar. Got in with my 1988 cut L’s and I was back.
U: Killin’ the game.
A: That literally happened a bunch of times and I can’t believe I managed to get away with it.
Alice Ivy is heading to Expo Liaison this weekend in Sydney and Brisbane, as well as Yours & Owls Festival on 30 September and Lost Lands Festival on 4 November.
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If you’re a musician and have some stories to share and some secrets to tell – be it hilarious or heartbreaking, humiliating or honourable – send us an email at twotruthscolumn[at]gmail.com.
We might be telling the whole world about the time you accidentally killed your brother’s pet snake and replaced it without anyone knowing in no time.
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