Wolf Alice – The Clearing
Lyrically knowing and sonically eclectic, the fourth album from London four-piece Wolf Alice pushes indie-rock forward
Opening a record about what we might call a mid-youth crisis with a song called Thorns feels appropriate; the thematic preoccupations of this fourth record by Wolf Alice are prickly ones. Lyrically, the album plays like frontwoman Ellie Rowsell’s odyssey through the five stages of grief, as she comes to terms with the fact that, no, she hasn’t gotten it all figured out in her thirties. She does so through moments of both high drama (the operatic Bloom Baby Bloom) and fuzzy-headed resignation (gorgeous closer The Sofa).
In fact, the wonderful contradiction at the heart of The Clearing is that for all its reckonings with uncertainty, it is musically supremely confident, cherry-picking choice influences from the 1970s and elegantly reworking them for the arenas that the band will ascend to for the first time later this year. There’s lush soft-rock (Just Two Girls), quiet euphoria (White Horses) and affecting piano balladry (the record’s emotional hinge, Play It Out). It maybe lacks a little of the stylistic free-spiritedness of its predecessor, Blue Weekend, but The Clearing makes up for that in refinement. It's an album that oozes confidence, from the UK’s indie-rock standard-bearers.
Listen to: Thorns, White Horses, The Sofa