Wolf Alice - The Clearing

The clues were all there on 2021’s ‘Blue Weekend’: from the swooning ‘Delicious Things’ to the delicate reflection of ‘How Can I Make It OK?’, ‘The Clearing’’s predecessor possessed a gorgeous, emotion-fused sense of composure that paired beautifully with Ellie Rowsell’s evocative lyrics. This time around, though, it’s as though any whispers of self-doubt have been firmly banished, with the band instead leaning fully into a no-holds-barred approach and creating an album that is truly filmic in its scope. Take opener ‘Thorns’ - with its swelling string section and Ellie’s showstopping vocal range, it feels at once sultry and fierce, provocative and coy. That it’s immediately followed by the bombastic, shapeshifting ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ - a true statement of intent, if ever there was one - only heightens the drama, swerving from ecstasy to fury and back in the blink of an eye. It’s this powerful spirit that runs through the very veins of ‘The Clearing’.

Learning that inspiration for the album struck after Ellie watched Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back Beatles docuseries makes a lot of sense for ‘The Clearing’’s sound and feel, too; not only do the band find themselves leaning towards the warm hues of ‘70s soft-rock (think Fleetwood Mac, or Steely Dan, all with a dose of the Fab Four for good measure), but the organic tones and tricks used across the record add extra flourishes of delight (see the dreamy transitions between acoustic and electric within ‘Leaning Against The Wall’, or the satisfying switch of audio on ‘Passenger Seat’).

Equally, Ellie is on spectacular lyrical form, with ‘Play It Out’ standing out as a particularly poignant rumination on the passage of time via the female experience (“I wanna age with excitement / Feel my world expand / Go grey and feel delighted / Don’t just look sexy on a man”). Later on, drummer Joel Amey-helmed ‘White Horses’ transforms the complicated tangle of identity and family into something altogether more celebratory, quietening the questioning and instead choosing contentment with his chosen family.

And therein lies the real beauty of ‘The Clearing’: after over a decade growing together as a band, this fourth album sees Wolf Alice fully embrace all facets of themselves, and through this newfound acceptance and confidence, they’ve produced their boldest, most striking record yet. One for the history books.

Tags: Album Reviews, Reviews, Columbia, Wolf Alice