Wolf Alice’s latest album ‘The Clearing’ marks their most confident era yet
f 2018, after their Mercury Prize nomination for Visions of a Life, that Wolf Alice officially went on hiatus. They had pushed that massive, ambitious record as far as it would go — played to crowds they wouldn’t have dared dream of when they first formed. Personal achievements had been racked up on top of it: stunning editorial shoots, award shows, and admirers from Bono to Keanu Reeves. They’d earned it. Lessons were learnt.
Between the band members, they all describe the hiatus as “a proper break,” confirms guitarist Oddie. Once the tour was over, everyone took a step back from the rock machine that had been chugging along for years. There were solo projects: Rowsell released her collection of poems, A Writer’s World, a heartfelt look at growing up in suburban London; Oddie’s Pets Hollow found new acclaim as an experimental explorer of shoe gaze and psych-rock and economics; Amey lent his production skills back to a local youth centre where he used to practise after school; Ellis, rightly, got into juggling. They promised each other this time wouldn’t end until the shadow of creative burnout had dissipated into the ether.
As soon as the restrictions of lockdown lifted, the four headed to the studio with Burns once more. “In the past, we’d haul ourselves in; now it was like, ‘Let’s really work on our communication and what it is that we actually all want to get out of the day,’” says Oddie.
The Clearing is Wolf Alice finding their stride again. It’s a return to their roots — albeit glossier and more expansive, where the guitars sound even more anthemic and Rowsell’s vocals seem more urgent. The title track sounds like a lullaby sung to a supernatural being from an ancient tome. On “Delilah,” Rowsell holds power over a choir of singers, dictating chaotic calamity. On “The Howl,” Wolf Alice take 90s alternative hollers and transport them into a cyberpunk novel. There are nods to indie masters of old — Cocteau Twins, Sonic Youth — as the album explores the elasticity of identity, of concealer, emotions, and hallucinations.
Wolf Alice has always been a band turned inwards. The Clearing, then, is perhaps their most introspective effort yet. “Antichrist” is a song fuelled by Oddie’s desperate clawing at reality until the edge of it slips away. It’s less a representation of any actual deity and more an invocation of lucid dreaming. “He Lives,” on the other hand, is the reality check after nightmares — of Rowsell sleepwalking through the hours after terror, hallucinations, and the effects of a restless mind.
What ties The Clearing together as an album is the band’s newest member, Natasha Khan, the driving force behind Bat for Lashes. The combination of their creative forces simultaneously merges her avant-garde pop sensibilities with Wolf Alice’s fascination with darkness. It’s ethereal pop but with a lurking shadow, the hopeless sense of dread only cutting through in the most lucid moments. At its essence, The Clearing is a haunting, beautiful record.
As they prepare for a sold-out Alexandra Palace show next week, Wolf Alice are reflective. The only defined plans they have are writing and recording their third record next year. “After that, it’s into the abyss,” smiles Amey as we wrap up, and perhaps that’s the best part. Because whatever Wolf Alice do from here on in will be honest, furiously fun, creative, and communal. They’re exactly where they said they always wish they’d be.