Wolf Alice: watch their performance on Saturday Night Live UK

Wolf Alice were the musical guests on the second episode of the new British series of Saturday Night Live UK, aired on 29 March. On the show's stage, the London band performed two songs, “White Horses” and “Leaning Against the Wall”, alongside host Jamie Dornan.

Watch the videos of Wolf Alice's performances below.

SNL UK debuted on March 21, hosted by Tina Fey with Wet Leg as musical guests. The US version of Saturday Night Live, currently on a break following the episode hosted by Harry Styles on March 14, will return on April 2 with Jack Black as host and Jack White as musical guest.

The British band released their latest album in 2025, “The Clearing“. In recent weeks they have also won Group of the Year at the BRIT Awards, where they performed the track “The Sofa” live.

Acceptance and awareness. These are the key words for understanding the genesis of “The Clearing”, the fourth album by Wolf Alice and the first released by a major label following their move to Columbia Records, a label owned by the Sony group.

Acceptance and awareness first of all of oneself, of one's own fragilities but also of one's own certainties, as well as of the inexorable passing of time. Because there's nothing wrong with admitting you've matured in the meantime and that you live your thirties more serenely than your turbulent twenties. Musically, all this translates into an embrace of calmer, more comforting sounds, like those of a certain kind of typically seventies soft rock. In interviews, frontwoman Ellie Rowsell 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. Said and 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 characterized their more atmospheric ones, favouring instead a predominantly acoustic instrumentation.

"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 the desire to write “songs that are… just great songs”, to quote guitarist Joff Oddie. This is a path already mapped out by two tracks from “Blue Weekend“, namely “Delicious Things” and “The Last Man On Earth”, which convinced Ellie and co. to embark on this new sonic direction, one that looks with keen interest to the radio-friendly pop-rock of the '70s. The so-called soft rock, in other words - probably the least cool genre in the indie circles Wolf Alice come from. “Loving soft rock has been embarrassing for so long”, the singer confided to the Guardian, “but now I don't worry about it anymore”.

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