When Wolf Alice returned with their roaring new single ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ back in May, it was clear the North London quartet meant business. “Look at me trying to play it hard / I’m so sick and tired of trying to play it hard,” vocalist Ellie Rowsell yowls with razored ferocity, before her hysterics soften into performative couplets of falsettoed niceties like the Jekyll and Hyde of female rage.
The frontwoman’s commanding vocals have always displayed her many sides, but this felt like an ignition switch signalling the arrival of something much bigger with their new album, ‘The Clearing’. Four years since ‘Blue Weekend’, a hugely ambitious and deeply melancholic meditation on love, friendships and the persistent growing pains of your late twenties, Wolf Alice have never sounded so authoritative in their sound and certain of their direction.
Expanding into ‘70s-inspired soft rock territory on their fourth album, Wolf Alice channel the vagabond spirit of influences like Fleetwood Mac while shaping it into something entirely fresh. Dream-pop canvases and shoegazey production are traded in for crisp, rustic instrumentals on the dynamic ‘White Horses’ – featuring lead vocals from drummer Joel Amey – while ‘Midnight Song’ humbly leads with a plucky guitar and hymnal vocals before a classical string ascension takes it somewhere cinematic.
Where many of their ovation-worthy crescendos previously felt like accidental stumbles into divine brilliance, on ‘The Clearing’, every note and lyric lands with a thud of intentionality. But the best moments arrive when they do cross that threshold and unfurl into something expansive, like when ‘Leaning Against The Wall’ transforms from a sweet acoustic interval to a drum-filled journey of pure ascension. Even when they go back to basics, it’s never at the expense of theatricality. “I must be a narcissist / God knows that I can’t resist / To make a song and dance about it,” Rowsell aptly declares on opener ‘Thorns’.
Retreading fertile ground in themes of love, self-worth and the world around them, there’s a clear sense of growth as the band return four years later in their early thirties. From echoing Charli XCX in candidly questioning children on ‘Play It Out’, paying tribute to the comfort of female friendship on ‘Just Two Girls’ or making peace with life’s contradictions on ‘The Sofa’, Rowsell’s growth is ever in step with her artistry. Still, it’s their lyrics about love that continue to knock it out of the park, like the observation on ‘Passenger Seat’ that a shared bottle of Coke “tastes so much sweeter when you don’t drink it alone”.
Their no frills approach might be an adjustment for fans who are still hoping to relive their first listens of favourites like ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ or ‘Bros’, but even with this sonic departure, the band sound truly and wholly like themselves. With ‘The Clearing’, yet again, Wolf Alice have proven that they are a band who know exactly where they’re meant to be.
The Clearing is out on August 22. Pre-order the vinyl
