Wolf Alice - In the company of wolves

A handful of singles was all it took for London's Wolf Alice to become the latest next big thing of British indie rock. But, for once, the British press's hype proved more than justified. Their career, marked by an enviable stylistic variety, reveals a band in constant evolution, capable of surprising with every new release. But with great power comes great responsibility, to the point that Telegraph now wonders whether Wolf Alice can single-handedly save British rock bands from irrelevance. Probably an exaggerated ask for a band that, at the end of the day, had set themselves an apparently much simpler goal: to turn their music into an overwhelming wave of emotion, able to convey different vibrations. To do so, Ellie Rowsell & co. initially opted for one of the most successful (but also most overused) formulas in rock history: the constant alternation between noise and melody, between rage and tenderness, which above all made the fortune of grunge. Wolf Alice thus became among the leading flag-bearers of a return to the atmospheres that had defined alternative rock in the 90s: Clash Magazine coined the term folk-grunge for them, while the New Musical Express initially described them as "the shoegaze version of Hole, but with better melodies". A grunge label that the band has never really warmed to, and which they've repeatedly dismissed as "journalistic laziness".

It would indeed be reductive to drag out the usual tired talk about nostalgia, since, given the obvious age gap (Joff Oddie and Joel Amey were born in '90, Ellie Rowsell and Theo Ellis in '92), the four members experienced the Nineties mostly in retrospect. Wolf Alice strike a delicate balance: they draw heavily on the past without ever becoming anachronistic; their songs are too fresh and personal to be dismissed as merely revivalist. Their sensibility remains distinctly contemporary, and it's clear they act as credible spokespeople for generational concerns.

A decisive part of Wolf Alice's appeal comes from the unpredictable and enigmatic vocalist Ellie Rowsell, who started out as a folk singer-songwriter before quickly morphing into a capricious punkette, able to play both the fragile girl and the femme fatale, swinging between gloomy gothic poems and adolescent outbursts, all without ever losing credibility. A singer-guitarist who is vocally eclectic and capable of countless expressive shades: whether it's angry screams, delicate whispers, neurotic deliveries, childlike flourishes or dreamlike ups and downs, it makes no difference to her. Alongside her is her closest musical collaborator, guitarist Joff Oddie, forever on the hunt for effects, distortions and assorted sonic trickery; bassist Theo Ellis, the band's jovial soul; and last but not least, drummer Joel Amey, also important in his role as second voice.

The beginnings: from folk to grunge

Raised in the Irish community of north London, Ellen Ciara Rowsell was writing stories and poems from a young age. At 14 she learned to strum the guitar: her first teenage idol was Avril Lavigne, soon replaced by Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs; then, thanks to Blur and Nirvana (but also Muse's "Absolution"), she gravitated towards 90s alternative rock. After gaining some experience with GarageBand, in 2010 she decided to form an acoustic duo with guitarist Joff Oddie, two years her senior and met on a music forum. Thus Wolf Alice were born, their name taken from a 1979 horror fairy tale by Angela Carter ("Wolf-Alice", a sort of reimagining of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Alice in Wonderland").

The lineup gradually expands with the arrival of two new members: bassist Sadie Cleary, who happens to be Ellie's best friend (and to whom "Bros" will later be dedicated), and drummer James DC. Still in 2010, Wolf Alice release a self-titled EP, self-produced and only available digitally. Three tracks in total, rather evocative ones (ranging from indietronica to folk), nowadays only findable on SoundCloud and YouTube.

In 2012 the band finally settles into its definitive lineup: Joel Amey replaces James DC behind the kit, while Theo Ellis becomes the new bassist. The two new members bring fresh ideas and musical influences, pushing Wolf Alice to abandon the acoustic leanings of their early days and considerably toughen up their sound. Between February and May 2013, the band's first physical singles come out, "Fluffy" and "Bros", destined to become among their most beloved songs, even though these are still embryonic versions compared to the ones they would later record for their debut album.

October brings their first official EP: four songs that already fully showcase Wolf Alice's qualities. The standout is "Blush", with its sticky, tongue-twisting chorus ("Punch drunk, dumb struck, pot luck happy, happy"), but "She" (with echoes of early Arctic Monkeys) and "90 Mile Beach" (a narcoleptic ballad in the style of Smashing Pumpkins) also make a strong impression.

Blush serves as the golden ticket that secures the band's signing to Dirty Hit, the up-and-coming label that suddenly became central to the British independent scene thanks to the breakthrough of 1975.

Just a few months later, Wolf Alice release a new extended play, Creature Songs, containing four more equally striking tracks. What really catches the attention of industry insiders and fans alike is above all "Moaning Lisa Smile", a rousing grunge anthem that turns the clock back to the golden age of Seattle music, complete with an ironic nod to the legendary video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Alternating melodic verses with noisy, guitar-forward choruses, Ellie Rowsell and co. prove they've perfectly absorbed the quiet/loud lesson taught by Pixies. "Storms" picks up the muscular sound of shoegaze bands like Swervedriver and Catherine Wheel, who in the mid-90s flirted heavily with grunge. In Wolf Alice, however, there has always been a more psychedelic, dreamy side present from the very start, well represented by "Heavenly Creatures" and "We're Not The Same". This blend of Nineties influences — grunge and shoegaze, dream pop and neo-psychedelia — is the London band's defining trait: Slowdive meets Nirvana, as the British press summed it up.

My Love Is Cool (2015)

After the promising run of EPs, Wolf Alice face a moment of truth: will they manage to confirm all the good things shown so far? My Love Is Cool, their debut studio album, settles the question once and for all: the faith placed in them was well-founded, and betting on them was worth it. Anyone expecting a record of nothing but big guitars, though, is bound to be disappointed from the very first notes of "Turn To Dust", a mysterious nursery rhyme barely whispered by Ellie Rowsell. It then falls to the revised, polished version of "Bros", one of the first songs the singer ever wrote, to set the album's mood, tinged with sweet melancholy and a lightness reminiscent of the Cranberries' debut album. Another key track in this sense is "Lisbon", an introverted indie pop ballad, tender and boisterous at once, about the fear felt when you're in love (capable of sending you tumbling into a "black hole deeper than death").

The leap from "new Nirvana with a female singer" to "a more refined version of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs" is a short one, then. In truth, the band's love of grunge resurfaces in the stop-and-go dynamics of "You're A Germ" (for which a hilarious horror-themed video was also shot), in the hysterical riot-grrrl screams of "Fluffy"'s chorus, and in the white-hot finale of "Giant Peach", one of their live concert staples. There's also room for the still adorably raw noise pop of "Your Loves Whore" and for the sudden electric coda that revives the excellent "Swallowtail", the only song sung by another member of the band — namely drummer Joel Amey.

The one-two punch of "Silk" and "Freazy" represents the biggest concession to mainstream pop and the radio trends of the time. The former, later featured on the soundtrack of the "Trainspotting" sequel, sounds a bit like a cross between Lana Del Rey and Lorde; the latter, meanwhile, plays like the indie answer to "Call Me Maybe", Carly Rae Jepsen's summer earworm. These references, however, sit in stark contrast with the lyrics, which are quite dark and inspired by Jeffrey Eugenides' novel "The Virgin Suicides".

Ellie Rowsell, the band's main songwriter, favours adolescent themes, handled in a way that's perhaps naive at times but always sincere, with a touch of poetic ambition. Her interior monologues mostly touch on subjects like unrequited love, feelings of inadequacy, death and loneliness. The singer has never hidden the fact that she suffers from anxiety, and her proverbial shyness comes through especially in interviews, where she often appears endearingly awkward, at times even a little clumsy — but always with a streak of self-deprecating humour and a quick wit. And on "Soapy Water" she lets out her own cry for help, with desperate lines like "Is hard to live when is good to die". The music videos, in any case, help defuse the tension, showing off Wolf Alice's healthy sense of humour, which also comes through strongly in how they handle their social media presence.

The record could only close with a ghost track — an inevitable cliché given the frequent nods to the 90s — with a lo-fi feel, Ellie inviting the listener into her bedroom to teach her rock'n'roll.

My Love Is Cool does extremely well at home, debuting at number two and earning a gold certification, while across the ocean it timidly cracks the Billboard Top 100. Critical opinion is likewise almost unanimous: NME, with its usual sense of restraint, calls it the "debut of the decade", and even Pitchfork, a webzine not usually known for being kind to emerging British bands, acknowledges the merits of Wolf Alice's debut record.

The band spends much of 2015 and 2016 on tour (including stops in Italy: first at I-Days in Monza, then, for two years running, at Firenze Rocks), earning themselves the satisfaction of playing Glastonbury for two consecutive years. Their endless bus journeys are captured in the documentary "On The Road", directed by English filmmaker Michael Winterbottom. "It was pretty awkward playing myself," Ellie Rowsell recalls of that experience today. The following year, the singer lends her voice to two tracks ("3WW" and "Deadcrush") on the third album by Alt-J, and she also gets involved in social causes, organising the charity event Bands 4 Refugees; she also openly backs the Labour Party in the 2017 election, supporting candidate Jeremy Corbyn.

Visions Of A Life (2017)

Wolf Alice hadn't been entirely satisfied with the mixing work done by Mike Crossey: the final result did, in fact, come across as overproduced, with the sound failing to fully do justice to the energy the band displayed in their live performances. For this reason, they decide to look for a new producer: their choice falls on American Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Beck's former bassist, who had already worked with M83 and Paramore.

Recorded in Los Angeles and released in September 2017, Visions Of A Life is a less immediate album than its predecessor. The starting point is still the 1990s, but with the ingredients measured out in different proportions: less grunge and twee pop, more shoegaze and dream-pop. The opening track, "Heavenward", immediately lays its cards on the table: the sound expands, the melodic构造 grows more sinister and menacing, and the overall mood darkens. Beneath the wall of sound created by Oddie and Rowsell's guitars — thicker and more textured than ever — sits the singer's layered voice.

Their music takes on a new, darker dimension: “Formidable Cool” comes across as a perverse, esoteric reworking of “Giant Peach”, while the anxiety-ridden “Sky Musings” embraces electronics à la Garbage. Wolf Alice also venture boldly into new, previously unexplored territory: for instance, the ambitious title track – eight minutes of epic riffs, relentless drumming, a cheerleader interlude, metal progressions and a solemn finale – comes within a hair's breadth of prog. Unpredictable twists also mark the surprising “Sadboy” and “St. Purple & Green”, while “Planet Hunter” — another of the album's high points — brings in the Mellotron.

“I see the signs of a lifetime, you ‘til I die

And I’m swiftly out, Irish goodbye

What if it’s not meant for me? Love”

(“Don’t Delete The Kisses”)

The dreamiest side of the band emerges above all in the timeless, pastoral folk of “After The Zero Hour”, the track where the influence of Lana Del Rey is most audible, and in the atmospheric synth-pop of “Don’t Delete The Kisses”. The latter, besides becoming their most-streamed song across digital platforms, is probably also Wolf Alice's masterpiece: over an almost ambient backdrop, after a dreamlike opening section, Ellie Rowsell delivers a spoken-word passage split into two parts and interspersed with a glorious chorus. An anthem for the 2010s, the perfect soundtrack for all those insecure kids who can't find the courage to open up to the person they love. The album's lyrics remain introspective throughout, with the singer letting us in on her anxieties: it's as if the reflections she'd jotted down in her personal diary had taken on musical form.

A quantomeno bizarre choice was made in picking “Yuk Foo” – a barely two-minute hardcore punk outburst inspired by reading “Our Band Could Be Your Life” (the bible of 80s American alternative rock) – as the lead single. A deliberately anti-commercial move that threw fans off and stirred up a fair amount of media controversy, especially over the much-discussed line “I wanna fuck all the people I meet”. The foul-mouthed lyric should be read as a personal outburst from Ellie Rowsell, fed up with having to meet other people's expectations and with always being portrayed as a shy, vulnerable frontwoman.

The album also includes a few more conventional pop-rock tracks with undeniable radio appeal, such as the second single “Beautifully Unconventional”, driven by a propulsive riff and accompanied by a 50s-style video (“it was just an excuse to wear a wig,” Ellie would joke), or “Space & Time”, a pounding garage rock number whose rhythm recalls the Velvet Underground of “I’m Waiting For The Man”.

Visions Of A Life is a record as sprawling as it is captivating, perhaps even pretentious in places, but one that confirms the enormous potential of the London quartet. With hindsight, it's a transitional album, yes, but in the best possible sense. Wolf Alice, in short, pass the test of the second album – notoriously the hardest one – with flying colours. And they begin racking up awards, including the coveted Mercury Prize and the top spot in Drowned In Sound's list of the best albums of the year.

Blue Weekend (2021)

Back home after an exhausting world tour alongside Foo Fighters and Queens Of The Stone Age, Wolf Alice decide to decamp to an Airbnb in Somerset to recharge their batteries and recapture the enthusiasm of their early days. The isolation fuels their creative process and helps them focus better on the new songs, written mostly in a deconsecrated church, in a world that hadn't yet had to reckon with the Covid-19 pandemic.

At the start of 2020 the band travels to Brussels to record the album at ICP Studios: shortly afterwards the virus begins spreading across Europe, and the four Londoners find themselves stranded in Belgium. But every cloud has a silver lining: the band makes use of the extra time to polish the songs further, refining them even more. This time Wolf Alice want to do things properly, bringing producer Markus Dravs on board – the kind of producer you call when you feel ready to really break through (his track record speaks for itself: Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Brian Eno, Björk, Florence + The Machine, Mumford & Sons, Kings Of Leon…).

In June 2021 the new album, Blue Weekend, is finally released. The choice of title is easily explained: blue is a colour Ellie Rowsell associates with the melancholy and sadness that often characterise her weekends.

Wolf Alice reintroduce themselves with a more glamorous look, starting with the singer herself, who in the meantime even poses for Vogue. And their cinematic sensibility finds its perfect expression: to promote the album, they decide to shoot a video for every song, portraying a typical Saturday night made up of escapes from reality, pubs populated by strange creatures, and late-night trips by taxi and bus. The lyrics tackle everyday frustrations, dwelling on the issues faced by twenty-somethings now on the verge of thirty (priorities shift, old friendships crumble...).

The themes therefore remain universal, since the platinum-selling singer's lyrics continue to deal essentially with relationships, with greater openness than in the past: she's no longer afraid to show the outside world her weaknesses. And in “Delicious Things”, the result of an unresolved conflict between hedonism and guilt, Ellie admits to having given in to temptation, accepting the drugs she was offered during her stay in Los Angeles.

The leap in songwriting quality is evident, in a record that departs from the rest of their output while still remaining consistent with it: it shows a Wolf Alice determined to strike out on new musical paths. Talking about a 90s revival no longer makes much sense at this point. Blue Weekend is an album with a thoroughly contemporary feel, one that prizes melody above all and doesn't shy away from pop crossovers or the odd nod to rap (for instance, in the verse of the irresistible second single “Smile”). The four Londoners have greater confidence in their own abilities (“We've become grown-up songwriters by now,” guitarist Joff Oddie admits), and they're keen to make that clear – with lines unusually defiant by their standards, like “I am what I am and I’m good at it/ And you don’t like me well that isn’t fucking relevant” – in the provocative lyrics of “Smile”, written as a reaction to the criticism they received over “Yuk Foo” and packed with feminist statements.

“Don’t call me mad/ There’s a difference, I’m angry/ And your choice to call me cute has offended me/ I have power, there are people who depend on me/ And even you have time you wish to spend on me”

(“Smile”)

Wolf Alice work hard to strike the right balance in an album that thrives on contrast, skilfully alternating more aggressive moments with lighter, almost ethereal ones that are often genuinely moving. Where previous albums sometimes betrayed a certain lack of cohesion from one song to the next, that problem is definitively solved on Blue Weekend. To underline the distinct yet complementary nature of the tracks on the record, the band uses fade-ins and fade-outs between the end of one song and the start of the next. All the tracks are linked, starting with the opener and the closer, which share the word “beach” in their titles: the opening “The Beach”, which even quotes Macbeth, is the more ominous of the two, while the closing “The Beach II” is more hopeful, perfectly suited to a lighters-up singalong beneath a wall of shoegaze guitars. In Ellie Rowsell's words, “it's like a journey reaching its end, in a more positive way than how it began.” A journey that takes in moments of fun (“Play The Greatest Hits”, an irreverent punk number) as well as others charged with a palpable, simmering tension (“Feeling Myself”).

In the prodigious vocal acrobatics that define "Lipstick On The Glass" and "How Can I Make It OK?", a more than justified increase in the frontwoman's prominence emerges, as she pushes her own voice to the foreground. The album is indeed a tribute to the vocal versatility of Ellie Rowsell, now fully matured and comfortable across the most disparate registers. Further proof comes in the splendid "The Last Man On Earth", inspired by Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 science-fiction novel "Cat's Cradle": it opens as a slow ballad for piano and voice alone, then strings enter in a typically Beatles-esque orchestral arrangement, before the melody finally explodes into a dizzying, cathartic final crescendo. Timeless tracks like "Safe From Heartbreak (If You Never Fall In Love)", sung a cappella, and "No Hard Feelings" instead recall their folk roots, albeit in a more dreamy setting. To be clear, the other members of the band have grown too: the echo of Joff Oddie's guitar, a capable disciple of the Kevin Shields school (My Bloody Valentine were his favourite band growing up), grows ever more laden with effects, while Theo Ellis's powerful bass lines take on a centrality they've never had before.

Enthusiastically received by critics, Blue Weekend became Wolf Alice's first record to debut straight at number one on the British chart, and by the end of the year it was appearing on just about every best-albums-of-2021 list going. The London band also triumphed at the 2022 Brit Awards, winning in the "Best Group" category. Anyone who thinks English rock has nothing left to say, or that guitar bands are now an endangered species, would do well to take notice of them.

Acceptance and self-awareness. These are the key words for understanding the genesis of The Clearing (2025), the first album released by a major following the band's move to Columbia Records, a label owned by the Sony group. Acceptance and awareness, first and foremost, of themselves - of their own fragilities but also their own certainties - as well as of the inexorable passing of time. Because there's nothing wrong with admitting you've grown up in the meantime, and that you now live your thirties more peacefully than your turbulent twenties. Musically, this translates into an arrival at calmer, more comforting sounds, reminiscent of a certain kind of distinctly seventies soft rock.

Few had picked up on the message, but Ellie Rowsell had already voiced this desire in the shouted pre-chorus of "Bloom Baby Bloom", the single introduced by a honky-tonk piano that heralded Wolf Alice's return after three years of deafening silence: she had grown tired of "playing it hard" at all costs ("Look at me trying to play it hard/ I'm so sick and tired of trying to play it hard"). And, ironically, this is the only track on the whole record where she still gives in to that temptation, before blossoming once again. In interviews, the frontwoman has reiterated that she no longer feels the need to pick up a guitar to be accepted as the frontwoman of a rock band: now she'd rather focus on using her voice as her main instrument. No sooner said than done. The rest of the band followed suit, leaving behind both the distorted, abrasive sounds of their more driving past tracks and the synths that characterised their more atmospheric ones, favouring predominantly acoustic instrumentation instead.

"Less is more" was one of the commandments in the studio, while inspiration came directly from "Get Back", Peter Jackson's documentary capturing the Beatles at work on what would become "Let It Be", which pushed the four Londoners to write songs while looking each other in the eye, without the aid of technology. Great care was devoted to the arrangements, polished down to the smallest detail thanks also to the advice of Greg Kurstin, the in-demand producer who has already worked with artists such as Adele, Paul McCartney, Liam Gallagher and Foo Fighters.

Wolf Alice's new stylistic turn stems from a desire to write "songs that are... just simply good songs", to quote guitarist Joff Oddie. It's a path already hinted at by two tracks from "Blue Weekend", namely "Delicious Things" and "The Last Man On Earth", which convinced Ellie and co. to pursue this new sonic direction, one that looks with great interest to the radio-friendly pop-rock of the 1970s. So-called soft rock, in other words - probably the least cool genre within the indie circles Wolf Alice come from. "Loving soft rock was embarrassing for such a long time," the singer told the Guardian, "but now I just don't care anymore".

The three singles released in recent months had already raised expectations: so different from one another, yet consistent with the band's history, they hinted at something significant to come. First came the exuberant "Bloom Baby Bloom", an unrestrained glam rock number that winks at the debut of Last Dinner Party (themselves heavily influenced by Wolf Alice), and gives us a tremendous vocal performance from Ellie Rowsell, a would-be Kate Bush for her generation. Then came "The Sofa", the album's most representative track, which rightfully ranks among the best songs the British band has ever written, with lyrics that read like a genuine manifesto of self-reconciliation. Though tinged here and there with a hint of regret, Ellie admits she never had the courage - or perhaps simply the desire - to move to California as she had dreamed of doing as a girl, remaining instead stuck in Seven Sisters, north London, as if some mysterious force were holding her there. And maybe that's been for the best, because these days she feels happy, loves her life, and cherishes those moments of peace and calm, metaphorically embodied by lying on the sofa. Finally, equally compelling is "White Horses", the first song written and sung by drummer Joel Amey since "Swallowtail" back in 2015: an adventurous journey driven by a kraut-rock rhythm, enriched by Ellie Rowsell's voice, which here serves the song in the role of backing vocalist, with inflections recalling both Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson of the B-52's and Dolores O'Riordan.

And what about the rest of the album? It perhaps doesn't always sustain those same heights, though - taken individually - every song works. The cinematic opener is reserved for "Thorns", a piano ballad with a Lennon-esque flavour, with filtered vocals and a vintage sheen. Here Rowsell, following speculation that "Blue Weekend" was a breakup album, wonders whether it's masochistic or narcissistic to keep recounting her private life through songs, despite being quite a reserved person ("Did it help to take the thorn out/ Telling the whole world you'd been hurt?"). Reflections that are anything but trivial - this time on motherhood and on accepting one's own physical ageing - also surface in "Play It Out", a tender lullaby contemplating a possible future without children and, eventually, without parents too. Female solidarity, and the realisation that the friends you'd always been waiting for were actually the ones you already had, are instead at the heart of "Just Two Girls": a song that could have fit right into the catalogue of Carole King, Carly Simon or Karen Carpenter, and one that will likely raise a few eyebrows among Wolf Alice's die-hard fans.

On-the-road themes and sun-drenched melodies define the ultra-catchy "Passenger Seat", West Coast through and through, and the lively, self-deprecating "Bread Butter Tea Sugar", which instead recalls ELO and the Steely Dan of "Reelin' In The Years". The California Sound also shines through on "Safe In The World", which nods to Buffalo Springfield. There's also room for "Midnight Song", poised halfway between the progressive folk of Pentangle and the psychedelic folk of hippie singer-songwriters like Linda Perhacs: references that, in this case, aren't entirely new territory for Wolf Alice (think of "After The Zero Hour", from their second album).

The ethereal, dreamy and at times even menacing atmospheres that helped make "Blue Weekend" an instant classic of the early 2020s have, by contrast, been temporarily set aside. The only track that comes close to those moods is "Leaning Against The Wall", which, after an unusually country-flavoured opening section, heads off into more experimental territory, with Ellie taking flight and soaring to dizzying heights.

The Clearing is thus a record on which Wolf Alice confirm the maturity their songwriting has achieved, adding a new, significant (and unexpected) piece to their career. Perhaps one or two livelier tracks (or maybe just an electric, à la "The Chain" finale, to stay on the subject of Fleetwood Mac, repeatedly cited as the main influence on this new chapter) might have benefited the record and, who knows, perhaps appeased those longtime fans who haven't quite warmed to this move towards sounds they consider excessively light. For the purists, "The Clearing" might have worked better as an Ellie Rowsell solo album rather than as a collective work by the band, with the other members - guitarist Joff Oddie in particular - seemingly too sidelined. Some have claimed, with a certain degree of originality, that the new album is "very Alice and not much Wolf", pointing to its supposed lack of bite.

The feeling, in truth, is that "The Clearing" - which has, incidentally, been very warmly received by international critics - is merely one stop on a broader journey, one we'll come to remember in future as a distinctive, one-of-a-kind work, the result of a band with no intention of repeating itself and every intention of continuing to evolve. If it's true that Wolf Alice have given up, at least in part, their eclecticism, with "The Clearing" they've delivered their most cohesive album yet, further enriching an already substantial body of work.

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