WOLF ALICE - The Clearing

Accettazione e consapevolezza. Sono queste le parole chiave per capire la genesi di “The Clearing”, il quarto album dei Wolf Alice e il primo pubblicato da una major dopo il passaggio alla Columbia Records, etichetta di proprietà del gruppo Sony. Accettazione e consapevolezza prima di tutto di sé stessi, delle proprie fragilità ma anche delle proprie certezze, così come dell’inesorabile scorrere del tempo. Perché non c’è nulla di male ad ammettere di essere nel frattempo maturati e di vivere più serenamente i propri trent’anni rispetto ai turbolenti venti. Musicalmente, tutto ciò si traduce nell’approdo a sonorità più tranquille e confortanti, come quelle di un certo soft rock tipicamente seventies.

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".

I tre singoli pubblicati negli ultimi mesi avevano contribuito ad alzare le aspettative: così diversi tra loro, eppure coerenti con la storia della band, lasciavano presagire qualcosa di importante. Prima l’esuberante “Bloom Baby Bloom”, un glam rock senza freni che strizza l’occhio all’esordio delle Last Dinner Party (a loro volta fortemente influenzate dai Wolf Alice) e ci regala una portentosa prova vocale di Ellie Rowsell, aspirante Kate Bush della sua generazione. Poi è il turno di “The Sofa“, il brano più rappresentativo del disco, che entra di diritto tra le migliori canzoni mai scritte dalla band britannica, con un testo che suona come un vero e proprio manifesto di riconciliazione con sé stessi. Seppur con un pizzico di rimpianto che emerge qua e là tra le righe, Ellie ammette di non aver avuto il coraggio – o forse semplicemente la voglia – di trasferirsi in California come avrebbe sognato da ragazza, rimanendo intrappolata a Seven Sisters, nord di Londra, come se una forza misteriosa la trattenesse lì. E forse è stato un bene, perché oggi si sente felice, ama la sua vita e apprezza quei momenti di pace e serenità metaforicamente simboleggiati dallo stare sdraiati sul divano.

Infine, risulta altrettanto stimolante “White Horses“, il primo brano scritto e cantato dal batterista Joel Amey dai tempi di “Swallowtail” (era il 2015): un viaggio avventuroso scandito da un ritmo kraut-rock, arricchito dalla voce di Ellie Rowsell che qui si mette al servizio del brano nei panni di una corista, con inflessioni che rimandano tanto a Kate Pierson e Cindy Wilson dei B-52's quanto a 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” è dunque un disco in cui i Wolf Alice confermano la maturità raggiunta dal proprio songwriting, aggiungendo un nuovo, importante (e inatteso) tassello alla loro carriera. Forse uno o due pezzi più movimentati (o magari anche solo un finale elettrico à-la “The Chain”, per restare in tema Fleetwood Mac, più volte citati come principale influenza di questo nuovo corso) avrebbero giovato all’opera e, chissà, magari accontentato quei fan della prima ora che non hanno troppo gradito l’approdo a sonorità considerate eccessivamente leggere. Per i più integralisti, “The Clearing” avrebbe potuto funzionare come album solista di Ellie Rowsell, ma non come lavoro collettivo della band, con gli altri membri – in particolare il chitarrista Joff Oddie – che risultano troppo sacrificati. Qualcuno ha affermato, con una certa dose di originalità, che il nuovo album sia “molto Alice e poco Wolf”, per sottolinearne la presunta mancanza di mordente.

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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27/08/2025