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Although UK-based band Wolf Alice has been making pop rock for over a decade, they find themselves right at home in a bout of nostalgic eighties rock with the release of their fourth album, The Clearing. 

Wolf Alice formed in 2010 as an acoustic duo made up of singer Ellie Rowsell and guitarist Joff Oddie, and the band has featured bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey since 2012. The band released their first EP in October of 2013, and has been steadily creating new music ever since. 

In the three years since their last album, Blue Weekend, Wolf Alice has taken home a Brit Award, toured with big names like Harry Styles, and signed with Columbia Records.

Finding beauty in The Clearing  

The album’s lead single, “Bloom Baby Bloom,” undeniably pulls influences from high-energy eighties pop rock (Rowsell shared that she was going for a “feminist take on Axl Rose”). 

“White Horses” – my favorite track on the album – showcases Rowsell’s beautiful range, highlighting haunting wails that rival The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan and set against beautiful, nimble acoustic finger-picking. “Know who I am that’s important to me / Do what I can to see the wood from the trees / Know who I am that’s important to me / Let the branches wrap their arms around me,” Rowsell cries in the chorus. 

“Just Two Girls,” is an ode to female friendship and its importance. While there are plenty of songs about love and friendship, there are few that encapsulate the female friendship and girlhood experience as well as this track does. 

Rowsell highlights the small moments of friendship, from “I like the way she chain-smokes incessantly / Tiny epiphanies when she’s drinking with me” to “We’re still sipping on our Palomas / But the night is young if I know you like I know you / You know, the best part is the debrief on the hangover / Yeah, you’re so right, you’re so right.” 

From being your friend’s pseudo-therapist, to hanging out drinking, to admiring them for their personality quirks and beauty, “Just Two Girls,” is a special kind of love song to a best friend.

“Bread Butter Tea Sugar,” sounds like a tribute to Electric Light Orchestra, full of keys and beautiful harmonies. “Play It Out,” is the album’s token ballad, reflecting on aging and the sacrifices that come with it. “When my body can no longer make a mother of me / Will I change my notion of time?” Rowsell croons at the start of the song. “I wanna age with excitement, feel my world expand,” she sings later, diving headfirst into growing older, despite all of the uncertainty that aging holds.

“The Sofa,” closes out the album with a relaxed, lounge-y vibe that feels a bit underwhelming as the final track of the album, but also makes a lot of sense. The song sees Rowsell forsaking ambition for the comfort of her couch, noting, “Didn’t make it out to California / Where I thought I might clean the slate / Feels a little like I’m stuck in Seven Sisters / North London, oh, England / And maybe that’s okay.”

Overall, The Clearing is a melange of genres and styles, combining Wolf Alice’s influences from glam rock of the seventies and eighties to the ballads of the nineties and the bedroom pop of the mid-2010s. While the album is a bit all-over-the-place, I think that perhaps that’s the point. The common thread is the honest and familiar experience of working hard to figure out who you are.

Listen to the full album below: