‘Our peers have come and gone. We're still here': Wolf Alice on ambition, ageing and why they've left Labour behind

Paper tablecloths, blazing sun, spitting grill, plastic chairs, dishes of tzatziki, an expectant cat sidling up to diners: we could be in Greece. 'It's like a holiday,' marvels guitarist Joff Oddie, sipping an enormous iced coffee. But Wolf Alice are not on a Mediterranean jaunt – they're at a restaurant on an industrial estate in Seven Sisters, north London, a few doors down from the studios where they wrote their upcoming fourth album The Clearing and its chart-topping predecessor, Blue Weekend. 'We used to call this street Anchovy Mile,' reminisces front woman Ellie Rowsell. 'Because it smelled like fish.' That might be the tip round the corner or, thinks bassist Theo Ellis, a nearby brewery ('something to do with filtering through fish scales'). Either way, such an odour would only cement the seafront ambience of 'Costa del Tottenham', as Ellis names it.
The only thing that could disrupt the serenity of this scorching Wednesday lunchtime is a spin of Wolf Alice's new single. Bloom Baby Bloom is a genre-bending rock bonanza: squealing guitars, bone-shaking bass, ostentatious drum fills, but also honky tonk piano and a dreamy pop chorus. Throughout Rowsell veers between breathy folk croon and a hair metal wail. To underline the retro vibe – and the vocal gymnastics – the video has Rowsell writhing in a sparkly, glam cut-out leotard amid a Fame-style dance troupe; in the promo images she is clad in cherry-red hot pants and matching knee-high boots.
The band aren't just going hell for leather aesthetically. After 2021's Blue Weekend, the foursome left indie label Dirty Hit and signed with Columbia Records, part of Sony. The move to a major means more money for spangly Lycra – but is it also a sign of prospective world domination?
'English bands are so hesitant to ever admit ambition, but I am ambitious with this record,' says drummer Joel Amey. Sony has the ability to spread the word globally, says Oddie: 'I'd like every person to be able to have the opportunity to say whether they like or don't like Wolf Alice.' Ellis looks bemused: 'That's a dangerous thing to wish!'
By many measures, Wolf Alice are already colossally successful. They are Brit and Mercury award-winners, and Grammy-nominated. Blue Weekend reached No 1, while their first two albums only narrowly missed the top spot. In 2016, they were the subject of a Michael Winterbottom film; the director called them 'the best band in the world'. They're high up on next month's Glastonbury bill. 'In many ways, bucket lists have been filled like five years ago,' admits Amey.
They have transcended the folk-punk shoegaze of their formative years to become omnivorous guitar music masters, incorporating hardcore, chamber pop, country, industrial, funk and psychedelia. On The Clearing they nod to krautrock, glam and trip-hop; one song sounds like a bossa nova Carpenters, another recalls Steely Dan's Reelin' in the Years. Yet what made the band an instant success story remains the same – Rowsell's precise, poetic millennial vignettes, and an ability to make every song stylish and memorable. As a genre, rock is experiencing a decades-long decline; there are no journeymen any more. 'Our peers have come and gone,' says Amey. 'We're still here.' The only way to be a rich and famous – or even solvent and vaguely recognisable – rock band in this day and age is to be exceptionally good at it.
And yet, you might also consider Wolf Alice underrated. They've never had a hit single. Gratifyingly, their most popular song on Spotify is also their best – 131m streams for 2017's Don't Delete the Kisses, which preserves the turbulent ecstasy of fledgling love in hypnotic indie electronica – but that's mostly due to a 'really big' TV sync. Which was …? They puzzle over the answer. Heartbreaker? suggests Rowsell. Heartstopper! says Ellis, suddenly remembering the name of Netflix's queer teen drama phenomenon. While Oddie seems the most business-minded (he tells me the band 'wouldn't work if it wasn't making money'), Ellis and Rowsell clearly can't fake an Ed Sheeran-style stats fixation.
It's a decade since Wolf Alice's debut album My Love Is Cool. Oddie's face lights up when reminiscing about the low-stakes euphoria of nascent rock stardom. 'Everything was a win. People coming up to you and saying that they liked your music; being buzzed about 20 people turning up to a gig in Leicester!' At that point they had been a proper band for less than three years – originally Wolf Alice was an acoustic duo comprising Oddie and Rowsell, who met via an internet forum. But nostalgia makes Rowsell shudder: she can't believe her youthful chutzpah, performing songs she didn't know on instruments she couldn't play. 'I didn't even know …'
'Where A was?' says Ellis.
'I still don't know where A is …' she mutters mordantly.
I first met the band in the run-up to that album's release, and they remain meticulously self-deprecating. Ellis and Rowsell both grew up in north London and still live here, as does Oddie (Amey has moved to Hastings). On The Clearing's sweetly harmonic closer, The Sofa, Rowsell reflects on youthful fantasies of escape to California, but sounds almost relieved at the prospect of being 'stuck in Seven Sisters' for ever.
But Wolf Alice are not immune to the march of time. They are all now in their 30s, and The Clearing is a meditation on the first stage of the ageing process, a time when the 'frantic' struggle to navigate adult life begins to ease, says Rowsell.
On Play It Out, a kind of self-soothing lullaby, Rowsell contemplates the rest of her life: a future without children and, eventually, parents. She wonders whether she'll still be valued and adored 'when my body can no longer make a mother out of me' – an anxiety partly prompted by acquaintances on social media posting about 'their mums or their partners being mums. It was the nicest things I'd ever heard coming from men about women. I was like: oh my God, I hope that you can not be a mother and people can think you're that amazing.' The proverb 'the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world' was also stuck in her head: on Play It Out, Rowsell attempts to make peace with the inescapable spectre of motherhood, even if it only exists in the form of 'an empty pram in my mind'.
Rowsell has an extraordinary ability to whittle her internal monologue into lyrics, but on The Clearing she begins to doubt her instincts. Opening song Thorns reflects wryly on Blue Weekend's account of a devastating breakup – that she must be a 'narcissist' to literally make a 'song and dance' about the split. At the time, she claimed Blue Weekend was her least autobiographical album. 'Yeah, I was lying!' she laughs.
In reality, the album combined real details with fictionalised elements, which often felt like the worst of both worlds. 'I was like, maybe it's not truthful, or it makes it sound worse.' Did she regret writing it? 'I wasn't sitting there being like: nooo,' she says, miming anxious despair. 'Well, actually I was …' Rowsell still doesn't know how much of her real life to put into her music. 'What is the stuff that's supposed to be kept for your DMC [deep meaningful conversation] with your mate? If I'm such a private person then why am I doing this?!' Does she find writing about her problems cathartic? 'I must do because look how much stress it's caused me!'
On the new album, Amey – too unwell to come to lunch, so we speak the following day – offers Rowsell a brief respite by taking the mic and pouring his own heart out. The sonic touchstones for the song White Horses were The Sunshine Underground by the Chemical Brothers, and Can; the lyrical inspiration was the lifelong mystery surrounding his heritage.
Previously, the 34-year-old had no handle on it. Taxi drivers routinely asked 'if I was from where they're from because of my dark colouring', but he couldn't say either way, because his mum and aunt were adopted. Then Amey's family found out his grandmother was from Saint Helena – a discovery that chimed with the 'strange in-perspective bullshit that starts happening in your 30s'. The resulting track alludes to his grandmother's 'very tough' journey to England and doubles as a love letter to his chosen family: his friends and bandmates.
Everyone agrees that they're in Wolf Alice for the long haul. But while getting old in a band is par for the course for men, there's an added self-consciousness for women. Rowsell ends Play It Out with an optimistic manifesto: she wants to 'age with excitement – go grey and feel delighted'. She is 'less worried' about her future as a frontwoman than she used to be, she says, partly thanks to a selection of inspirational peers, including Charli xcx, Caroline Polachek and Self Esteem.
All three of those women are knowingly camp and committed to mining cool from unlikely places – all of which Wolf Alice are doing in their flamboyant new era. When Rowsell, 32, was growing up in the 00s, zeitgeisty rock was 'quite cold and aggressive, black and white, not warm' – think angular post-punk revivalists such as Interpol. The Clearing skews instead towards 'softer and more colourful' 1970s guitar music; Fleetwood Mac, Pentangle and Steely Dan were all references. Liking soft rock was 'embarrassing for so long', she continues. 'I don't care any more.' The bold new look is an extension of this. When Rowsell was younger she agonised over wearing the right thing. 'Now I'm so tired of caring that I just want to do something fun.' Not funny, though. 'I don't want people to think it's a joke,' she says. 'It's self-aware, but not self-deprecating.'
The Clearing was recorded in LA, with Adele's producer Greg Kurstin, but its gestation period ran from spring 2023 to the end of 2024. Rowsell says that witnessing everyone 'noodling' and 'pottering' in Get Back, Peter Jackson's epic Beatles documentary trilogy, inspired a leisurely, tech-free, in-person writing process. Yet the band assure me it is merely a coincidence that the beginning of the album sounds so Beatlesque: Thorns' pared-back piano intro and swelling strings land somewhere between Let It Be and I Am the Walrus. 'Every song sounds a bit like the Beatles,' says Oddie. 'They invented everything.'
They are well aware that having such space and time is a luxury for a band, especially in the current economic climate. Costs of touring have almost doubled since they started, Oddie explains, but ticket prices have only increased by a small amount. Plus, it was hard enough back then – the foursome were only able to make tours viable by cramming themselves into a single small hotel room or sleeping on friends' floors. The tacit agreement was that the stay would turn into a party, say Oddie. 'You'd be having big nights out for weeks on end, it was exhausting.' But even that didn't last. 'If your friends start leaving uni and you're doing a regional tour, you're like: I don't actually know that many people in Sheffield now I'm 23,' says Ellis.
Last week, Oddie told MPs in a parliamentary meeting that he didn't know how his band would survive if they were starting out today. He was giving evidence as part of an effort to safeguard the future of live music in the UK amid rocketing costs and shuttering venues, suggesting a £1 levy on tickets for larger gigs, with the proceeds going to support up-and-coming acts on tour (the band are donating £1 from each UK ticket sale to help grassroots venues).
His appearance recalls the late 2010s, when Wolf Alice were never far from the cut and thrust of Whitehall. The band heavily endorsed Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 election, played anti-Tory marches and kicked off their 2018 Brixton Academy show with Danny Dyer's expletive-riddled viral rant about Brexit, in which he called David Cameron a 'twat'.
Back then, they were driven by a genuine optimism about Corbyn's message and the excitement of being part of a genre-uniting 'youthquake'; 2017 was the year Stormzy paid tribute to the Grenfell victims and participated in pro-Corbyn chants at Glastonbury. It all seems like a very long time ago. Can they see themselves speaking out about politics again? 'It depends if we're represented by someone,' says Ellis. 'Personally, I don't feel particularly represented right now by many things.' Oddie thinks they should use their platform 'sparingly – if you talk all the time about something, people switch off.'
The band's focus is now on some secret-ish Irish dates (they never officially announced them; they sold out anyway) to warm up for that Glastonbury performance and Radio 1's Big Weekend, although Ellis is concerned he might have forgotten 'how to stand'. For their end-of-year arena tour, they're hoping to transform their usually straightforward live show into a spectacle: the current West End production of Cabaret, which Rowsell recently took Ellis to see, may be an influence; there might be a wind machine. With an exceptional – if characteristically unconventional – new album and major label money behind them, perhaps Wolf Alice will also take things to the next level commercially this time. But global superstardom isn't the be-all and end-all; to be honest, they seem more than happy on Anchovy Mile.
Bloom Baby Bloom is out now on Columbia Records. The Clearing is released 29 August

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Times

an hour ago

• Times

Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter: from Disney to festival headliners

Eight days apart, at the British Summer Time stage in Hyde Park, in front of a crowd of 65,000, two glittering, platinum pop titans will perform. First up, next Friday, is Olivia Rodrigo: 22 years old, 46 million monthly listeners on Spotify; 14 Grammy nominations; three wins; and about to headline Glastonbury. Then, on July 5 and 6, Sabrina Carpenter: 26 years old, 70 million monthly listeners on Spotify; six Grammy nominations; two wins; her song Espresso the biggest single of 2024 by a female artist. The pair have often been depicted as bitter rivals: two Disney Channel alumni whose overlapping journeys to superstardom were powered partly by lyrics that may, or may not, have been written about the same ex-boyfriend. But really, they are both lessons in how to pull off the Disney breakaway — what happens when young women wriggle out of their contracts and embrace their new freedom by singing about the brutality and reality of modern girlhood, its shattering heartbreaks and the fun of the rebound. One of the things that marks both of them out is the obsessiveness with which their fans pore over their songs and image-making, whether it's Rodrigo last week being accused on social media of ordering a Nashville music venue to take down Taylor Swift imagery before she filmed there — it was actually removed by the venue for legal reasons — or Carpenter sending the internet into meltdown with the suggestive cover art for her new album, Man's Best Friend. Rodrigo grew up in Temacula, California, a theatre kid in a family who did other things — her mother a teacher, her father a therapist. After various singing competitions and school productions, she was made the lead in the American Girl doll franchise movie at 12 years old and, the following year, cast in Disney's Bizaardvark and then High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a mockumentary. Rodrigo was homeschooled, studying for her exams on set. 'Like, 'Oh shit, I worked my whole childhood and I'm never going to get it back,'' she told The Guardian in 2023. 'I didn't go to football games, I didn't have this group of girlfriends that I hung out with after school. That's kind of sad.' After a song she wrote for the High School Musical show went viral, Rodrigo sought a record deal, choosing not to make music for Disney's in-house label. She went with Interscope/Geffen. Disney allowed her to break her contract before the show's fourth series and, during the pandemic, Rodrigo sat down to write. In 2021 her song Drivers License went stratospheric, breaking a Spotify record as the first song to hit 80 million streams in seven days. The track reached No 1 in 48 countries on Apple Music, 31 countries on Spotify and 14 countries on YouTube. 'It's been the absolute craziest week of my life,' she said in an interview. 'My entire life just, like, shifted in an instant.' Four months later she released her debut album, Sour, a pop-punk triumph about her teenage heartbreak, the songs searing and seething with anger, underwritten by longing and ache — all written by a 17-year-old, with her producer, Dan Nigro. Though she stretched her legs in the ballads, it was her stroppy, plucky rock which was particularly satisfying. Critics, with some arch surprise that it had come from a squeaky-clean Disney-kid, gave the album rave reviews. At Glastonbury 2022 she brought on Lily Allen to sing Allen's 2009 banger F*** You, dedicating it to the Supreme Court justices who had just overturned the Roe v Wade abortion ruling in the United States. 'I'm devastated and terrified, and so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this,' Rodrigo said on stage, having spent hours memorising her speech. As well as being a great song with crushing lyrics, it created a perfect storm of gossip and intrigue. 'And you're probably with that blonde girl,' she sang, 'who always made me doubt — she's so much older than me.' Fans were convinced she was singing about her former Disney co-star Joshua Bassett, with whom they thought she had a romantic relationship. The 'blonde girl', they suspected, was Sabrina Carpenter, who was rumoured to have dated Bassett the next summer. 'I put it out not knowing that it would get that reaction, so it was really strange [when] it did,' Rodrigo told Variety. 'I just remember [everyone being] so weird and speculative about stuff they had no idea about.' She also said she and Carpenter had only met 'once or twice in passing'. 'So I don't think I could write a song that was meaningful or emotional about somebody that I don't know.' In January 2021, two weeks after Drivers License blew up, Carpenter released Skin. 'Maybe 'blonde' was the only rhyme,' went the lyrics. 'You been telling your side, so I'll be telling mine.' She, like Rodrigo, was not drawn on specifics. 'The song isn't calling out one single person,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Some lines address a specific situation, while other lines address plenty of other experiences I've had this past year.' The internet whirled, creating soap opera plots around them. They both later said they received a barrage of death threats. Bassett told People magazine that he received so much hate that he was taken to hospital, diagnosed with septic shock. 'I have a right to stand up for myself,' he told GQ. 'People don't know anything they're talking about.' For his part Bassett, 24, has just been on a European tour, playing venues in Glasgow, Birmingham and London that are about 20 times smaller than his apparent exes' Hyde Park performances. Carpenter, meanwhile, has hit mega fame. Her sixth album, Short n' Sweet — she is 5ft tall — debuted at No 1 in America. Her single Espresso went platinum in more than a dozen countries and won a Grammy for best pop solo performance. The Disney empire first claimed Carpenter, who grew up East Greenville, Pennsylvania, at 12 years old, signing her into a five-record deal, after which she starred in its show Girl Meets World. After family-friendly pop, Carpenter broke away from the label after just four albums ('I definitely didn't fulfil my contract, thank god,' she told Vogue) and signed with Island Records at 22. Her fifth album, Emails I Can't Send, took a turn towards something more grown-up — and cheeky. 'Woke up this morning, thought I'd write a pop hit,' she trills. Her image shifted again for Short n' Sweet, taking on a hyper-femme, soft-edged, Betty Boop look, her blonde hair big and bouncing. As Time magazine put it: 'She's short, she's funny, and she's horny.' But as she became more of a sex bomb, she got more sardonic. 'You'll just have to taste me when he's kissing you,' she sings in Taste. Her video for Please Please Please featured her then-boyfriend, the actor Barry Keoghan, shortly after his viral scene in Saltburn, in which he is so lustful for his friend he drinks his bathwater. During her performance at Coachella, she swapped her lyrics around with a wink. 'He's drinking my bathwater like it's red wine,' she sang. After their break-up, the internet is again spinning with speculation that her new song, Manchild, relates to him. 'This song became to me something I can look back on that will score the mental montage to the very confusing and fun young adult years of life,' she wrote on social media. It includes the couplet: 'Never heard of self-care/ Half your brain just ain't there.' Carpenter's amped-up naughtiness, however, now runs the risk of tipping into alienation. Her recent album cover, which shows her on her knees in front of a man's legs, while a hand pulls her hair, drew enormous criticism including from Glasgow Women's Aid. Her caricature of the sexualised, submissive woman suddenly looked exactly like the thing it was supposed to be riffing off. At Hyde Park, Rodrigo and Carpenter will hit the same stage on successive weekends after sold-out arena tours, their fans trailing in stomper boots and eyeliner (Rodrigo) or sequins and pale-pink babydoll dresses (Carpenter). It is a very modern coming-of-age story, two young women whose specificity of lyrics and canny presentation of their personal lives have whipped up a frenzy of speculation; whose rage and cheek and charm has been released on the world; who dazzle and glitter — and kick 'em where it hurts.

Daily Mail​

an hour ago

• Daily Mail​

Naga Munchetty tells how she has always 'hated seeing people bullied' - after she too faced complaint amid probes into BBC Breakfast culture

Naga Munchetty has said she 'hated' to see people bullied at school after it was revealed she allegedly bullied a junior staffer on BBC Breakfast last year. In an interview days before the allegations against her resurfaced, the presenter, 50, had said she battled against rude comments made about her appearance and talent. The TV and radio host from south London said: 'I was no angel but I hated seeing people bullied. 'I remember there were a couple of kids in school who were bullied and I just hated it. 'So I'd always kind of be that person who would speak to everyone.' Speaking on the Walking The Dog With Emily Dean podcast she explained that she confronts people that upset her at work. The presenter, who is already at the centre of BBC Breakfast 's toxicity row, was reportedly spoken to by bosses over a sex jibe she made while off-air at BBC Radio 5 Live. This comes as BBC Breakfast finds itself at the centre of a bullying and misconduct probe, with editor Richard Frediani taking an extended period of leave after an internal review of the allegations was opened into the show. According to The Sun, Naga used a slang term for a sex act during an off-air break. In an interview days before the allegations against her resurfaced, the presenter, 50, had said she battled against rude comments made about her appearance and talent The alleged remark in 2022 was said to have stunned the studio and led to Naga being spoken to by bosses. It was then reported that on BBC Breakfast last year, Naga was spoken to over alleged bullying of a woman. The BBC are now reportedly facing questions over whether there are 'double standards'. It comes as it was also reported that BBC Breakfast's editor Richard has taken an extended period of leave, after an internal review of bullying and misconduct allegations was opened into the show. It was previously claimed that the show's staff are feeling increasingly 'uneasy' around Frediani, with the former Head of ITV News accused of 'shaking' a female editor while working on the show. The Sun claimed that Richard has stepped back from the show, and while he had already taken time off to go on holiday, has mutually agreed to extend his break. Sources are also claiming that BBC bosses have held a series of meetings on how to handle the developing crisis. In an internal email obtained by the publication, John McAndrew, Director of Live and Daily News, thanked staff for their 'positivity' during this 'stressful time' - and informed them of Richard's decision. A source added: 'Fredi was already taking a break because obviously the allegations against him have been pretty damning, and he needed time to reflect. 'He's devastated by some of the claims and has also had a lot of behind the scenes support from colleagues, many of whom think he's a brilliant boss. 'BBC executives have ensured duty of care measures and he is still in touch with a few of the team. Right now, it's imperative that the BBC gets its house in order and ensures everyone is happy.' When contacted by MailOnline, a BBC representative said: 'While we do not comment on individual cases, we take all complaints about conduct at work extremely seriously and will not tolerate behaviour that is not in line with our values. 'We have robust processes in place and would encourage any staff with concerns to raise them directly with us so they can be addressed.'

Daily Mail​

2 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Naomi Campbell, 55, looks chic in black lace alongside Miley Cyrus, 32, as they step out for glitzy night in London

Naomi Campbell looked chic in black lace alongside Miley Cyrus as they stepped out for glitzy night in London on Saturday. The supermodel, 55, showcased her toned physique in a daring lace bodycon dress which she layered over a black bra. She added inches to her statuesque frame as she slipped into a pair of towering black satin sling back heels. To accessorise, Naomi completed her look with a pair of black tinted sunglasses as she stepped out to Rough Trade East for Miley's fan signing following the release of her latest album Something Beautiful. Meanwhile Miley, 32, was later seen leaving a Lost City immersive event in Covent Garden. The Flowers hitmaker looked incredible in a casual cropped black jumper which she layered with a long black satin skirt. The singer cut an elegant display as she finished her look with a pair of classic black stilletos. To accessorise, Miley completed her ensemble with a pair of trendy black-tinted oval sunglasses and black satin gloves. Also attending the event was Miley's father Billy Ray Cyrus and his girlfriend Liz Hurley. Billy cut a casual figure in an oversized red shirt, baggy blue jeans and a pair of brown suede Chelsea boots. Liz put on a leggy display for the outing as she stepped out in a busty purple long-sleeved dress. She added inches to her stunning figure as she slipped into a pair towering gold platform heels Miley's appearance comes after she unpacked a decade's worth of family drama and trauma and revealed how she mended all of her fences. The star was born in the spotlight, the daughter of country music legend Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus, who found fame herself at a young age as star of the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana. She grew up to be a global pop star in her own right, though she revealed on last Tuesday's episode of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky, her road to fame was filled with family strife. She teased the whole family went through a, 'really difficult, dark decade' but they were able to get through it. Miley revealed on the podcast that the family was able to mend their fences without therapy. We're so messy, we didn't even do any of that,' Miley joked of her family struggles, revealing the reason a therapist wasn't involved. 'Just to get each other into a room to get to counseling would have been a war,' Miley admitted. She told Lewinsky that at one point of the 'dark decade,' half of her family members were not speaking to each other. Miley admitted she, 'had a lot of loyalty' to her mother Tish, who split with father Billy Ray back in 2022 after nearly 30 years of marriage and sharing Miley, Braison, 31 and Noah, 25. Before their official split and divorce that was finalized in 2023, Miley said that her parents were on-and-off, as she revealed how that affected her. 'I watched what happens when you don't clean things up as they're happening,' Miley admitted. 'They really do stack. And then all of the sudden you go, "Oh my God, it's been 10 years and this is a mess I barely even know how to start. This is emotional hoarding,"' she admitted. Ultimately, the singer, 'cleaned all that up,' during a, 'really important part of [her] year … putting those lines of communication back together.' 'I just kind of busted through the pile that stacked and just [went], "I'm here, you're here, let's start by having a good time together and then as we start bringing some happiness and joy into each other's life, then we'll be in a better place to have these conversations,"' she admitted. She also admitted it, 'was easier to wave a white flag' than go through counseling with someone else. The singer added she likes others to decide they, 'like the way she's functioning' and attempt to 'mimic' it. She will be addressing the family drama more directly on her forthcoming album, teasing that a song called Secrets. Miley said the song is about her wanting her dad, 'to feel safe enough to tell [her] the things that were damning and damaging to the family.'