If you’re an indie rock band, especially a British one, and you make it big, it’s probably because of That Song. The one you play at every show; the one people’s parents know. You don’t like this song anymore, if you ever did—it’s not daring musically or lyrically, nor particularly difficult to perform. When you play it, it’s with an air of faux reluctance, of being above it all. You might not even bother singing—the crowd is doing it for you.
Wolf Alice don’t, at time of writing, have this song. Their biggest to date is “Don’t Delete the Kisses,” but if that’s naïve it’s self-consciously so. Crowd-friendly grungy turns, like debut single “Fluffy”—“I’d sell you my soul just to get me somewhere”—are far too honest to come off as arrogant. There’s no prototypical Wolf Alice song because all their best are about reaching beyond the self, beyond home (London, North), maybe toward someone, maybe just taking a leap, always measuring the distance between what you are and what you could choose to be. Autofiction and Miranda July have, appropriately, come up in press for the band’s new record, The Clearing. But not every experiment can be a revelation, and high aspirations have left past albums feeling a little patchy.
The stakes for this fourth LP, then, are the same as they’ve been since the first: adored locally, incredible live; could this album make them huge? Well, it’s a glitzier production than any past release, but it’s sometimes unsatisfying in the way shadow puppets are: big, strong shapes missing an essential depth. Opener “Thorns”—rich, bitter—continues the self-inquiry with melodrama, strings, and a looping refrain about making “a song and dance about it.” “Bloom Baby Bloom” is higher-energy, more shrink-wrapped than you’d expect from the band, but grounded by Ellie Rowsell’s acidic singing. There are grunts, a soft count-in, a snarl; the song is wearing out its own ambition, a theme for the whole album, but the sentiment has its wings clipped. The song’s sharpest couplet—“Look at me trying to play it hard/I’m so sick and tired of trying to play it hard”—to cite the band itself, isn’t loud enough.
Producer Greg Kurstin’s work with Adele explains all the piano, but he’s also co-written and produced the sorts of pop songs that play with indie rock fans: You can hear the relentless play-punch of “Famous” by Charli XCX all over The Clearing, and the funky ease of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Boy Problems.” Both of those Kurstin productions bumped shoulders with Wolf Alice on my teenage playlists.
The more decisive (and nostalgic) pop tilt means The Clearing isn’t ever forgettable. “Passenger Seat” and “Bread Butter Tea Sugar” definitely vindicate that approach. But not everything does. “Just Two Girls” starts playfully, but folds into too much repetition and rhyme; “Leaning Against the Wall” is a good song unfairly marred by a digital drum track, then inexplicably killed with a brutal on-off fizzle. By the final song, “The Sofa,” loungey instrumentation feels like an intrusion. The song’s about choosing comfort over Californian ambition, but it’s not clear who the message is for: “Sofa” nods British, but clarifying where Seven Sisters is—“North London, oh England”—betrays lingering American concern.
The band sounds bigger than ever. Quips like “Feeding me charm/In miniature measures” are characteristically witty, and charismatic performances lift even the simplest lyrics. “White Horses,” on which drummer Joel Amey sings breathlessly about family, feels genuinely fresh, and it’s a highlight because it’s just the four of them: Amey, Rowsell, bassist Theo Ellis, and guitarist Joff Oddie, tight-knit as ever. But everywhere you look, sharp edges are sanded down, reverby soundscapes reined in, static hums bucked. There’s not a trace of grunge here, and plenty of barks that never become bites. Wolf Alice don’t need to be abrasive—some of their best songs are glossy and tender—but no definitive edge fills the vacuum, and it makes The Clearing a shade too polished.
Wolf Alice have been UK rock’s saviors-in-waiting for a decade now, but going from promise to product—from prospect to standard-bearer—means trying to please a lot of people all at once. The Clearing shoots for timelessness by hedging its risks, buttressing any heights, making sure we don’t get lost. There are still some brilliant moments, but safety is hard to fully fall for. When I called my mum last week, she mentioned getting into a new song, one I might know: “The Sofa,” by Wolf Alice. Didn’t they used to be on a poster by my bed?
