What a relief it is that the next big British indie sensation isn't a bunch of anointed lads with stadium-sized savior complexes. Wolf Alice's debut album is one of 2015's most anticipated homegrown debuts, thanks not to them running their mouths or having the right management, but three years of hard touring punctuated by just four EPs. In the UK, My Love is Cool is being touted as grunge’s second (or, ninth) coming, when really it affirms the tentative coming-of-age story in guitarist/singer Ellie Rowsell’s lyrics by refusing to settle for a single identity at this early stage.
Wolf Alice are best at capturing sensations. The chiming rush of "Bros" freeze-frames the heady teenage abandon of the lyrics—bad haircuts and hopping buses with a best friend you'd die for—as Rowsell's wistful vocal turn establishes her increasing distance from that time. Meanwhile "Freazy" is Wolf Alice's us-against-the-world mission statement: "You can hate us all you want but it don't mean nothing at all." There's a neat Haim-like snap to the choruses, but the dreamy verses clash with Mike Crossey's intense production sheen, evoking a time when Tin Tin Out were pop's go-to remixers.
When Wolf Alice rage, they usually do it with stealth. It takes 90 seconds for "You're a Germ" to turn from grave whispers about a bad boy in cheap leather to an indictment of the "dodgy fucker." Rowsell's a limber vocalist: "Lisbon" starts with Azure Ray sweetness as she clings to an ex's stolen cigarettes and threadbare t-shirt, but by the end it sounds as if she's rounded up the rest of the band to smash in every window of his house. Forgoing restraint in favor of hard-edged, exhilarating swagger, "Giant Peach" and "Fluffy" confront the suffocating element of remaining in the place where you grew up. "What the hell keeps me here/ In a dark old town that I've adored?" Rowsell snarls on "Giant Peach". "The rules don't seem so clear/ And change, it feels like fear/ It's all you know."
That sense of vulnerability also informs some of Rowsell's bleaker lyrics, which unpick the social implications of mental health issues while conveying their claustrophobia. "Silk" mutates from spare coldwave to a dark nursery rhyme that rejects the idea of depression as an interesting character trait. On "Soapy Water", a distant-sounding Rowsell hides inside a mesmerizing disco swirl to conceal the effects of anxiety from her parents. It's crushing but strangely comforting, like repeated viewings of The Virgin Suicides.
Concealed at the end of My Love Is Cool is the secret title track, a bedroom demo of Rowsell and her electric guitar. "Teach me, teach me/ Teach me rock and roll," she sings softly. But the confident diversity of My Love Is Cool indicates a band who have their own thing all figured out, who shouldn't veer from their own strange path to live up to outdated narratives that dictate what a young British band should be.
