Noémie Wolfs has a flair for the dramatic

Plucked from an open call audition with nearly one thousand hopefuls, Wolfs’ chance of a lifetime came with the unenviable task of redefining a role shaped by her predecessor Geike Arnaert, who left the band in 2008. But if the former graphic design student, aspiring recording artist and budding elegante was nervous, she wasn’t going to let it show.

Even as a child, Wolfs says she possessed a clear sense of self. She expressed it first through an interest in fashion, inspired by her parents, and out of that grew a curiosity about stage performance and music. “They’re both retired now but my mother had a shoe store in Antwerp and my father was a shoe designer,” she explains. “He always brought the samples home because he wanted to keep them as a memory of what he had designed. So, I was inspired by fashion at a young age, and that, as an artist, you have the ability to be other people – but not in a false way. When I’m on stage, I just feel empowered.”

Introduced to the public as the new voice of Hooverphonic on a Belgian late-night TV show in November 2010, the young Wolfs had an instantly magnetic presence that married perfectly with Raymond Geerts’ and Alex Callier’s ambitious productions. Released shortly afterwards, her first album with the band was The Night Before, the seventh of Hooverphonic’s studio records, which went platinum in Belgium and sold well across the rest of mainland Europe.

Two further albums – Hooverphonic with Orchestra (2012) and Reflection (2013) – saw the trio build on their strengths, but a need to explore other creative frontiers led to an amicable parting after just five years. “I really loved playing with the band, I was a fan of the cinematic music,” says Wolfs. “But Alex had his own ideas about me being the singer of a band like Hooverphonic.”

As she approached her late twenties and met her husband, Simon Casier, who plays in another popular Belgian band, Balthazar, Wolfs wanted to strike out on her own. “I realised that I wanted to write my own stuff, to experiment with instruments, and to be able to experiment with fashion on stage,” she says.

“I had worked with Alex on some Hooverphonic tracks, but it’s his band, his baby, and it was difficult to rhyme that with a solo career and giving me more responsibility. For me it was totally fine to do both, but for him it was like, ‘No, you’re the face of this band and you can’t be the face of another.’ To this day, I find it sad that we couldn’t combine the two. But I guess it was also time for me to embark on another adventure, and I’m happy that I made that decision.”

Wolfs’ assured solo debut Hunt You was released through Universal in 2016, re-introducing her as an artist with something to say. Co-written with her husband and helmed by British producer Luke Smith (Depeche Mode, Petite Noir), the album offered a stirring mix of alternative, chamber pop and folktronica, while leaving plenty of room to grow. A more rhythmically pronounced second album, Lonely Boy’s Paradise – a cooperation with Belgian writer–producer Yello Staelens – arrived in 2020, but its fortunes were undercut by the pandemic.

“I released it, I think, two days before the pandemic hit Europe, so I never played any shows with that one,” sighs Wolfs. “I had a lot of high hopes for that album. Everything was on the verge of starting and then everything got shut down. I know it was the case for everybody, but still I had this period of mourning.”

As the saying goes, out of adversity comes opportunity, and Wolfs was one of the many artists who used the enforced downtime to her advantage. “It took until the second or third lockdown – I don’t remember anymore because there were so many – to start grieving [for Lonely Boy’s Paradise]. I needed a new project, new lyrics, new songs where I could put all my sadness. In that way, while making Wild at Heart was hard, it’s the most personal album I’ve done. There are a lot of emotions going on.

“When I listen to the string arrangements or synthesizers, I can reimagine moments where Simon and I were in our home studio when the world was totally locked down. It was impossible to meet people or to go outside. That’s why Wild at Heart is like a time capsule. It brings me back to a period where I was happy and sad at the same time. Maybe that sounds a little bit corny, but I’m the most proud of this one.”

Despite its piecemeal assembly, Wild at Heart is another consistent batch of tunes cast in semi-familiar alternative, chamber pop and R&B sonics. This time, they’re done up as an exciting exercise in fusion. Or, as described by Wolfs herself: “I wanted to combine synthesizers with big Hollywood strings.”

Though co-written and co-produced with her husband, it’s Wolfs’ own vision that drives the songs, emphasising atmosphere without shortchanging compositional depth. Consider “In My Wildest Dreams”, an airy track that combines John Barry’s symphonic grandeur with Massive Attack’s electro-minimalism. It’s a striking aural cocktail that signals a genuine leap forward for Wolfs, made even sweeter by the fact that she could stamp her own name on it as producer.

“This is the first time that I’ve produced a record myself," she says. "But I’m lucky to be sharing a house and a relationship with someone who’s very musically likeminded and one of the best musicians in Belgium.”

As Wolfs describes, the two had worked together before but always with an outside producer in the room to offer a third opinion. For Wild at Heart, it was just the two of them all the way. “In the beginning, I was scared because we’re so close,” she confesses.

“We share a house, we share a relationship, we share love, we share anger. Isn’t this one bridge too far? Aren’t we sharing too much?” In the end, she says that Wild at Heart turned out exactly how she wanted it to, not in spite of but because she made it with Casier, “someone who I love so dearly.”

Interestingly, the healthy dynamic between the couple doesn’t play out in the narrative posture of Wild at Heart’s ten songs, which instead dive into the darker corners and complexities of attraction and romance, as seen on songs like “Love Me / Love Me Not”, “Get Out!” and “Bad Luck”. Wolfs says she’s always been drawn to love’s mercurial side and prefers to write from that perspective than necessarily from her own lived experience.

“I have stability in my relationship, so it’s weird [to have written these songs],” she says, laughing. “It’s hard to make a good or positive love song without falling into clichés. I don’t mind clichés – I mean, The Beatles were singing ‘I wanna hold your hand,’ and it’s a very pretty sentence – but I prefer to write about more dramatic love. I don’t know why. I guess it’s more cinematic that way.”

As a singer, Wolfs has always bridged smouldering passion and mascara-smudging melancholia. On Wild at Heart, her singing lends a grounded quality to the songs, keeping their transportive aesthetic gently in check. “Moonlight” and “Try, Try, Try” are as evocative and alluring as anything she’s done with Hooverphonic or since.

Three albums into her solo endeavours, Wolfs remains a fascinating, if underappreciated, presence on the European contemporary pop scene. Does she deserve a larger platform? Certainly, but Wolfs herself takes a pragmatic and playful view. Having seen the industry from both sides, she says she’d rather be “in an underdog position than in the popular girl position.”

“I don’t want to be an artist who releases an album and it sounds the same as the last one,” she concludes. “The albums that I love the most are the ones where you can hear an artist flourish. That’s what I want to do, to not repeat anything I’ve done before.”

“Of course, world domination would be nice as well!”, she says, grinning.