Wolf Alice’s epic Finsbury Park headline show is the celebration & victory lap the quartet deserve

“A homecoming.” That’s how Wolf Alice’s headline show at Finsbury Park was billed. It can be easy to slip into hyperbole to describe these kind of big outdoor gigs, but here it seems entirely appropriate: a band returning to their roots, a celebration, a victory lap.

Before getting to the full-circle nature of today though, it’s worth taking a canter through the last year or so for the band, because this is just the cap on a fairly momentous twelve months for Wolf Alice. Their fourth record - last year’s ‘The Clearing’ - saw them take home yet another Number One album, with the band stepping up to playing the arenas that they’ve been so clearly ready for some time to play. They look and sound no longer just like a rock band, but like stars, having played packed sunset slots at handfuls of festivals, and selling out not one but two nights at the O2 in London.

It’s in the context of all of this that Wolf Alice stride onto the stage in North London - one that’s coated in an almost implausible volume of silver tinsel. Launching into ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’, they’re promptly greeted by an explosion of white confetti. The show has very much begun, as the four-piece look imperious as they make the song’s knotty melodies sound anthemic.

It’s a reminder of just how far the band has come since playing their first gig in Highbury, just down the road. The Wolf Alice of those early years was defined by a gifted-but-shy Ellie Rowsell, possessed of an unmistakable voice, but far less interested in performance than in writing ethereal rock songs. More than fifteen years on, it’s hard to believe that this is that same Ellie, who now so effortlessly plays the role of the rock star: that same extraordinary voice but now suave, assured, and clearly having an absolute ball.

She’s not up there alone, of course; the band’s strength lies in numbers, and in the ability of Joff Oddie, Theo Ellis and Joel Amey to play foils to one another. Theo the self-appointed hypeman as well as bassist, all dyed hair and wide eyes, while on the other side of the stage, Joff wrangles all manner of guitar riffs with reserved cool. And it’s Joel who plays a standout part on following song ‘White Horses’, drumming and delivering his speak-sing vocal part in tandem.