If you\u2019re an indie rock band, especially a British one, and you make it big, it\u2019s probably because of That Song. The one you play at every show; the one people\u2019s parents know. You don\u2019t like this song anymore, if you ever did\u2014it\u2019s not daring musically or lyrically, nor particularly difficult to perform. When you play it, it\u2019s with an air of faux reluctance, of being above it all. You might not even bother singing\u2014the crowd is doing it for you.<\/p>\n
Wolf Alice<\/a> don\u2019t, at time of writing, have this song. Their biggest to date is \u201cDon\u2019t Delete the Kisses,\u201d but if that\u2019s na\u00efve it\u2019s self-consciously so. Crowd-friendly grungy turns, like debut single \u201cFluffy\u201d\u2014\u201cI\u2019d sell you my soul just to get me somewhere\u201d\u2014are far too honest to come off as arrogant. There\u2019s no prototypical Wolf Alice song because all their best are about reaching beyond the self, beyond home (London, North), maybe toward someone, maybe just taking a leap, always measuring the distance between what you are and what you could choose to be. Autofiction<\/a> and Miranda July<\/a> have, appropriately, come up in press for the band\u2019s new record, The Clearing. But not every experiment can be a revelation, and high aspirations have left past albums feeling a little patchy.<\/p>\n The stakes for this fourth LP, then, are the same as they\u2019ve been since the first: adored locally, incredible live; could this album make them huge? Well, it\u2019s a glitzier production than any past release, but it\u2019s sometimes unsatisfying in the way shadow puppets are: big, strong shapes missing an essential depth. Opener \u201cThorns\u201d\u2014rich, bitter\u2014continues the self-inquiry with melodrama, strings, and a looping refrain about making \u201ca song and dance about it.\u201d \u201cBloom Baby Bloom\u201d is higher-energy, more shrink-wrapped than you\u2019d expect from the band, but grounded by Ellie Rowsell\u2019s acidic singing. There are grunts, a soft count-in, a snarl; the song is wearing out its own ambition, a theme for the whole album, but the sentiment has its wings clipped. The song\u2019s sharpest couplet\u2014\u201cLook at me trying to play it hard\/I\u2019m so sick and tired of trying to play it hard\u201d\u2014to cite the band itself, isn\u2019t loud enough<\/a>.<\/p>\n Producer Greg Kurstin\u2019s work with Adele<\/a> explains all the piano, but he\u2019s also co-written and produced the sorts of pop songs that play with indie rock fans: You can hear the relentless play-punch of \u201cFamous\u201d by Charli XCX<\/a> all over The Clearing, and the funky ease of Carly Rae Jepsen<\/a>\u2019s \u201cBoy Problems.\u201d Both of those Kurstin productions bumped shoulders with Wolf Alice on my teenage playlists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re an indie rock band, especially a British one, and you make it big, it\u2019s probably because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[31104,77,269,16,15,4715],"class_list":{"0":"post-381753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115110225299181094","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}