SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: WOLF ALICE – THE CLEARING

WOLF ALICE
THE CLEARING
RCA RECORDS

It’s been four years since we’ve heard something of substance from Wolf Alice, and they’ve had their fanbase on tenterhooks, particularly since the much-trailed single “Bloom Baby Bloom” showed off the band’s evolution in sound.

That’s here, and the bouncy, poppy, piano-led “Thorns” and “Just Two Girls” back it up nicely for a great opening triplet, but it’s after this the album begins to shine the strongest.

The folksy “Leaning Against The Wall” is a perfect late-summer, late-afternoon lazy meander, while “Passenger Seat” is the kind of tuneful pop you just don’t see written much anymore. It’s a beauty, and to be fair, most tracks on the album are. It’d be remiss not to mention “Play It Out” in the same ilk too, as it’s simply beautiful.

However, that track’s beauty is also where it might find some detractors. After all I did say ‘pop’, and the album is clearer and smoother than ever before, and while it brings the incredible Ellie Rowsell to the forefront, it lacks the bite (besides lyrically, which remains as caustic as ever) of their earlier work. It’s a pop album, and the vast majority of it would sit well on mainstream radio and could genuinely be massive.

Is that a critique? Not so much. It’ll depend on the listener, but without an attachment to their early works, this just sounds fresh, original, and yes, grown up, to this ear. You can’t be as angry as you were in your twenties forever, after all.

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