Alfie Templeman: Sheffield's The Leadmill

Thinking out loud and ready to address the world - the evolution of self-taught, Bedfordshire-born, multi-instrumentalist, set to embark on his mellow escape to a different planet

By Tom Adams March 2022

"Feels like a new beginning..."

…a lyric taken from the optimistically nostalgic ‘80s disco sounding tune, Forever Isn’t Long Enough, couldn’t be a more fitting line for such a thoughtful and talented young artist on the brink of embarking into a new era with the release of his studio album ‘Mellow Moon’ later this year. Yet at just nineteen years old, Alfie already has a diverse discography of buoyant alternative-pop, or “indie R&B” according to Templeman himself, sounding anthems all personally written, instrumentalised and self-produced. But with two years of live musical opportunities and social experiences stolen from his prime teenage years due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Alfie astutely channels his own deep emotions and hopes for the future to produce a characteristically-energetic record representing the shady feelings of a generation filled with poetic bittersweet hope.

Right now the indie-pop singer-songwriter is currently playing his biggest UK and European tour yet, finally being able to showcase the live album debut of trio: Candy Floss, Mellow Moon and Colour Me Blue to seventeen different cities from the likes of Glasgow to London and Paris to Berlin. On the back of releasing his 2021 mini-album ‘Forever Isn’t Long Enough’, where Alfie’s typically genre-blending music fused pop, rock, jazz, folk and R&B into one vibrant ensemble, he’ll undoubtedly be ready to push musical boundaries even further with his next much-anticipated creation.

Templeman has always been so passionate about music. At nineteen, he can play an impressive ten instruments, learning the drums and guitar at just eight years old. His obsession to learn as many instruments as possible has engendered a unique style where his musical-centred childhood has created a distinctive collection where the many sounds heard on Alfie’s songs are predominantly all of his own doing. Much of his inspiration comes from the rural village of Carlton, Bedfordshire - which as a county has notably produced the likes of Tom Grennan, Don Broco and The Scruff, as just a few of the names whose footsteps he'll be hoping to follow in.

Despite his often festival anthem, disco-funk driven songs under his own name, in 2018 Alfie kickstarted a side-project under the name Ariel Days which allows him the opportunity to release more instrumentally gentle sounding tunes to satisfy his evidently evolving musical talent. But soon Alfie is set to transform himself further with a brand new era of music. Holding on to his Mac DeMarco, Connan Mockasin and Todd Rundgren calmingly creative, instrumental sound he owns so well, it's evident just how skilled he really is when it comes to performing... and it comes as no surprise as to why.

Dating back to 2018, Alfie released his debut song Orange Juice which, due to only being four years ago, just epitomises truly how quickly he has grown to in just fifty-two months and a global pandemic later. The song fuses a cheerful summer guitar riff with disorientated lyrics of a cold, lost feeling at heart and immediately sets up a journey for a remarkable artist not afraid to blend happy musical melodies with genuine, raw lyrical backstories. A year later at the age of sixteen, Templeman delivered another catchy disco-funk tune with Stop Thinking (About Me) which dejected undertones of aggressively addressing the often disheartened disillusion of relationships, conveniently linking the song Who I Am during the same year by potentially existing as an internal monologue in response to the doubts and concern experienced throughout the former - Stop Thinking.

Then July 2020, Alfie announced his Happiness In Liquid Form EP, featuring his most popular song of the same name which would go on to generate an immense 21.4 million listens on Spotify alone. Despite the upbeat nature of the 70s-styled mini-album, the singer introduced the reality of his social anxiety with the existence that he feels he is always seen as an Obvious Guy in public when he just wants to blend in and hide away at times, in addition to how depression has become like My Best Friend - as two songs on the album that fittingly exists like a form of connected therapy.

Now, following the release of singles 3-D Feelings and most recently and his favourite yet, Broken, it feels a lot like an assured turning point for Alfie by amalgamating his feelings over the past two years to work towards his first album, ‘Mellow Moon’. With the everyday pressures and anxieties of the past twenty-four months that has given life a ‘new norm’ mantra, it’s never felt more fitting to have an artist speak for a generation with so many stresses and mental health concerns many already face. Maybe we all need to find a bit of happiness and tranquillity in our own way more often, or perhaps rocketing away to a different planet every once in a while may just be all we need - that or all the wonderfully dazzling retro, genre-fusing summer anthems a certain Mellow Moon will provide us with in no time.

Alfie Templeman's debut album 'Mellow Moon' will be released on 27th May, 2022.