Wolf Alice – The Clearing

Soft Rock | Folk

60%

 

I wasn’t all that enamoured with ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ the first few times I heard it. When I’m craving a bit of Wolf Alice it means I’m longing for a blend of hazy dream pop and sharp, shrieking rockers, and ‘Bloom’ did little fulfil either craving. I found it too off kilter and disjointed, pulling in too many directions. Ideally a lead single should say a lot about the album as a whole, and I didn’t much like what it was saying.

A few more listens however, and it began to click. I began to enjoy its more ambitious, proggy structure, how each band member gets their own time in the spotlight for a tidy little instrumental breakdown. The way it tests the range and limits of Ellie’s vocals, yet keeps circling back to that rock solid chorus. The track’s eccentricity and ambition really grew on me; I started to feel curious, and even a little hopeful, about how a full album in this vein would sound.

The Clearing is not that record. ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ was just a red herring. It feels more like a careful step back than an aspirational leap into the unknown. The one trait they have in common is the desire spear off into multiple directions. I hoped this would be enough for the album as a whole to grow on me, much the same way its lead single did, but repeat listens instead left me feeling more and more bored. The record’s folky numbers like ‘Leaning Against The Wall’ and ‘Play It Out’ tend to lack the hazy haunting quality found on introspective tracks from past releases, instead feeling like sparse sleepy lullabies. The uninspired Americana of ‘Passenger Seat’, the chilled-out blues vibe of ‘Safe in the World’, the orchestral soft rock of ‘Thorns’ – all of it feels very middle of the road. Inoffensive but uninteresting. There’s none of the energy and venom of past records, none of the rich swirling soundscapes, and more importantly very few of the strong hooks we know them to be capable of. It’s all been stripped away, with little new of note brought in to fill the void. 

There are still moments within that are worth your time. The harmonies on ‘Midnight Song’ capture the haunting atmosphere that was missing on the other quieter tracks, and the guitar solo in the second half of 70s rocker ‘Bread Butter Tea Sugar’ is simply sublime, even if the first half of the track feels a little tame by comparison. For my money though, the most memorable offering here is the lush grooves of ‘Just Two Girls’. It navigates a soft jazzy pop sound in a similar vein as the most recent records from Clairo and Lizzy McAlpine, but with a bit of ‘Bros’ energy thrown into the mix. Most heartening of all is that across the board, even at the record’s lowest ebb, Ellie Rowsell’s vocals feel stronger and more assured than ever.

Though the atmosphere of this latest record has garnered comparisons to Fleetwood Mac, I find that a little inaccurate and a bit too generous. It reminds me more of Arctic Monkeys most recent records, Tranquility Base and The Car. Here’s the pitch: a beloved British indie band following up a fan favourite album with a sharp turn into lush lounge music, prioritising stylistic change and creating a vibe at the expense of their songwriting chops falling by the wayside a bit. There are two important distinctions however. Firstly that Tranquillity Base had a well defined artistic vision, while The Clearing doesn’t feel like it has a clear goal that it’s reaching towards. Secondly, Arctic Monkeys took their creative tangent after they’d already become one of the biggest bands in the world. They were a band who’d already done it all electing to try something new. Wolf Alice aren’t quite a household name yet, in the scheme of things they still have more to prove, higher to climb. The Clearing sadly feels like a damp squib that’s robbing a talented band of some of their hard earned momentum.