Wolf Alice Hit an Adult-Rock Peak on ‘The Clearing’

Wolf Alice – Credit: Rachel Fleminger Hudson*

The U.K. band Wolf Alice have been making eclectic pop-rock for a decade, specializing in textural music that swings big emotionally while moving within different sonic settings, proving what a guitar band can do to stay on its game in a post-guitar world. They’ve never put it together with the sweep and depth of their fourth album, The Clearing, steeped in classic Seventies and Eighties influences yet never feeling like they’re just firing up a playlist of old bangers.

Singer-guitarist Ellie Rowsell goes all-in on huge rockers while delivering serious personal impact on this album’s softer stock-taking moments. Musically, they’re sharp as ever. On “White Horses,” acoustic strumming and nimble, fractured finger-picking gets underlaid by a planing Kraut-rock beat, as Rowsell’s voice lifts off in ululating throes of Florence Welsh/Dolores O’Riordan ecstasy, eventually landing on a massive payoff. The stomping high-point “Bloom Baby Bloom” sounds something from a lost Kate Bush pop-metal record (Rowsell says she was going for a kind of feminist take on Axl Rose). “Bread Butter Tea Sugar” is a dreamy tribute to peak ELO.

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At the heart is Rowsell’s self-defining search for direction and meaning as she moves into the real part of adulthood. “I wanna settle down/Oh, to fall in love/But sometimes I just want to fuck,” she sings on “The Sofa,” which recalls the introspective piano pop of Carole King and claims her couch as a safe space away from the pressures of life. “Passenger Seat” is mature both musically and emotionally, a lavishly detailed folk-rock assessment of relationship ambiguity. On “Just Two Girls,” going out for drinks is more about chill friendship than partying, while the moving ballad “Play It Out” reflects on the hard trade-offs that come with getting older. “I want to age with excitement, feel my world expand,” she sings, sounding bravely unsure as to what that means.

In the tradition of King’s Tapestry or Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna, this is a great album about the scary experience of honestly figuring what kind of person you are — and what the world owes you for the hard work you already do.

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