| Louise Distras | |
| Genre: | Alternative Rock, Punk Rock |
| Occupations: | Singer, songwriter |
| Instruments: | Vocals, Guitar |
| Years Active: | 2012 – present |
Louise Distras is an English singer, songwriter and musician from Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Louise Distras was born in Wakefield, a city in the North of England, in 1987.[1] She taught herself to play the violin at an early age and later learned to play guitar by "bunking off school and smoking cigarettes"[2] and listening to Nirvana's debut album Bleach. Distras ran away from home in her teens.[1] In a 2019 interview with The Chronicle she said "being able to escape into songwriting and guitar-playing is what got me through."[3]
Distras started performing live in 2012 holding her first shows in pubs and open mic nights. At one of her early gigs she met Anne Scargill (a prominent figure of the Women Against Pit Closures movement that supported miners and their families in the UK miners' strike of 1984–1985) who sang "Women of the Working Class" to her. "She told me to write a song that's just for women, so that's what I did," said Louise on X (formerly Twitter). Distras uploaded her first single "The Hand You Hold" to YouTube on International Women's Day, picking up media attention from The Guardian,[4] The Independent, and BBC Radio 1. She was invited by Billy Bragg to perform on the Leftfield Stage at Glastonbury Festival and he tweeted "Maybe we'd have done better at Eurovision if Louise Distras had been our entry?" In 2015, she released her debut full-length album Dreams from the Factory Floor and performed across America, Canada, Scandinavia and Europe, opening for The Damned, Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers and Television.[5] Music journalist John Robb called her "the most important protest singer we have" in a review on the Louder Than War website.[6]
In 2016 Distras premiered her new single "Aileen" via Kerrang!,[7] marking a change in musical direction. Kerrang! named Louise Distras a "Star of 2017" saying "Louise Distras is the most exciting voice in UK punk right now!" "Aileen" received radio support from Huw Stephens (BBC Radio 1),[8] John Kennedy (Radio X) and Rodney Bingenheimer (KROQ). It also featured on the Hugs for Chelsea benefit album which premiered on Rolling Stone.[9]
She embarked on a UK and European Tour with The King Blues[10] and performed on the main stage at Punk Rock Bowling Festival in Las Vegas.[11] Distras headlined the Nick Alexander stage of Frank Turner's Lost Evenings Festival at The Roundhouse in London, and performed at Glastonbury Festival[12] for a second time under the invitation of Billy Bragg.
In 2018 Distras announced she was working on her second album and premiered the music video "Land of Dope and Glory" by MTV VMA-nominated director Lewis Cater. "It's inspired by Black Mirror and looks like Crass joined forces with Barbie to create a dystopian TV channel" said Louise in an interview with Loudersound.[13]
In 2019 she released the "Street Revolution" EP and received more praise from Kerrang! who said, "Louise Distras has the kind of voice that could charm the paint from a car". The title track "Street Revolution" was made John Kennedy's 'X-posure Hot One' on Radio X and named as one of DJ Gary Crowley's top tracks of 2019 who described "Street Revolution" "as a song for our times. It leaps out of the radio".
She also performed in Germany, supporting The Subways, The Interrupters, Dead Kennedys, Dropkick Murphys and appeared as a special guest on the new King Blues album 38 Minutes.
In a post on social media, Distras stated her new album release had been pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the music industry and being subjected to online abuse.
On 4 November 2022, Distras released a new single "Black Skies", with a spoken-word introduction from Steve Ignorant of Crass.[14]
In an interview with Backseat Mafia, Distras revealed she had to crowdfund her upcoming new album as she had never been paid for the sales of her debut album Dreams from the Factory Floor.[15]
On 27 January Distras released "Girl in the Mirror" and announced her second album Beauty After Bruises would be out on 28 April via Ministry Of Love Records, saying "I don't want to make music that's a space for the best, glossy version of myself so Beauty After Bruises is about the ugly truth. This album is messy just like me and it's about honouring the parts of myself that I looked away from."[16]
Beauty After Bruises was recorded at 25th Street Studios in Oakland, California with American Grammy nominated producer Ross Peterson (Bruce Springsteen, Elle King) and mixed by the English music producer Stephen Street (best known for his work with the Smiths, the Cranberries and Blur). Guest musicians include Mick Talbot (The Style Council / Dexys Midnight Runners) on keys, and Puscifer drummer Gunnar Olsen on drums.
Louderthanwar said "Punk is about attitude and Louise has enough for the whole of Yorkshire. Her voice was always emotional but now it's more introspective, more mature and distinctive. With less shouting, she has become a voice to be heard."[17]
Clash magazine said "Wakefield's underground heroine Louise Distras is at her best on new album Beauty After Bruises" and "Beauty After Bruises is a hugely endearing return from a massive talent."[18]
Distras's biggest influences include Nirvana: she cites their 1989 debut album Bleach as her favourite album. Some of her earlier influences include Bee Gees, Queen, ABBA, Sex Pistols, Whitney Houston, Oasis and Lydia Lunch.[19]
She has incorporated elements of the classic 1977 punk rock aesthetic into her work, notably in the music videos "The Hand You Hold" and "Shades of Hate". She is also known for retaining her thick Yorkshire accent during interviews[20] and makes no attempt to sing in an American accent.
Distras describes herself as "a soft working class feminist rooted in a Northern working class upbringing" and has written for fanzines citing Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs as one of her early influences. In 2012 she supported the Russian feminist band Pussy Riot in an interview with The Guardian.[4]
In 2013 she appeared on the BBC Radio 1 documentary "Make Some Noise"[21] and John Pienaar's BBC Radio 5 show Pienaar's Politics to discuss the role of protest songs in modern music.
In 2015 Distras auctioned vinyl test pressings of Dreams from the Factory Floor on eBay and donated the funds to California non-profit human rights organisation Justice Now. Justice Now co-ordinated an art project based around Dreams from the Factory Floor lyrics, where people in the Central California Women's Facility (the world's biggest women's prison) illustrated copies of her songs "The Hand You Hold" and "Love Me The Way I Am". The finished art pieces were displayed at various events throughout the year.
Later that year she performed alongside Mick Jones (The Clash) and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) at London's Coronet Theatre to raise funds for the London Fire Brigade in Joe Strummer's memory, and appeared live on Channel 4 news to discuss the closure of Kellingley Colliery.
In 2019 Distras became an ambassador for Musicians Against Homelessness and joined Jon Sparkes (Chief Executive of Crisis), Alan McGee, Shaun Ryder and Neville Staple of The Specials at the Houses of Parliament in London to campaign against homelessness.[22]
Distras views "cancel culture" as a form of censorship that is "just mind games for the middle classes".[15] She also directly criticised Ireland's new hate speech laws, saying "We should all be able to speak without being policed and told what we can and can't say about our own lives."[23]
Alongside five other women, Distras featured in a Daily Mail article about women who believed they'd been ostracised from their jobs after aligning themselves with the Anti-Gender movement.[24]
In an interview with Julie Bindel for UnHerd Distras said that "the music industry used to be about freedom of expression and freedom of speech", and there was "an urgent need to build a new one with a proper counterculture, where women have actually got a proper say".
She is a supporter of Far Right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) and announced that she was "proud to sing for our country with Tommy Robinson" on social media in July 2024.