Alexander Wolfe

Born in Cambridge, England, in 1981 as Alexander Gordon de Menthon, the introspective singer/songwriter whose work consistently balanced melancholy with underlying optimism later adopted his late grandmother’s maiden name to launch his solo recordings. Creativity ran through his family: his brother Jamie Scallion, who had fronted the indie rock band Officer Kicks, subsequently turned to writing young-adult fiction. Wolfe spent his formative years in Woolwich, southeast London, where an unplanned encounter at a Denmark Street guitar shop with an unknown Jamie Cullum prompted them to form the short-lived group Taxi. The band split by the middle of 2002; while Cullum pursued jazz, Wolfe gradually shaped a personal style that echoed the subdued indie textures of Elbow and Doves yet leaned more noticeably toward folk traditions.

Proceeds from the sale of a family-inherited Rembrandt lithograph financed the principal recording sessions for his first album at Wheeler End Studios in Buckinghamshire, a property then rented by Noel Gallagher. The resulting Morning Brings a Flood appeared in March 2010 after an exacting process during which Wolfe performed every instrument except the horns, strings, and drums—the latter supplied by Steve Pilgrim, formerly of the Stands. National radio regularly aired “Song for the Dead,” whose sea-shanty-inflected indie rock echoed the sound of the Stands and their Liverpool contemporaries; the song served as both opening and closing theme for Alan Davies’ BBC2 sitcom Whites.

His second release, the appropriately named Skeletons, arrived in 2012 as a largely acoustic, bare-bones set captured over a single weekend at his parents’ Woolwich home with assistance from longtime friend Jan “Stan” Kybert. In addition to original material, the album contained a version of Neil Young’s “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” that was also issued as a single. Wolfe returned to a full-band approach for From the Shallows, released in October 2014 and featuring the single “Sunburn,” whose promotional clip starred Huey Morgan of Fun Lovin’ Criminals and whose proceeds benefited The Children’s Trust.