The Sofa There’s a comforting feeling behind Ellie Rowsell’s vocals. The front-woman of British rock band, Wolf Alice, captivates and charms all over the band’s fourth studio album, called The Clearing. The album itself was produced by veteran hit-maker Greg Kurstin (Foo Fighters, Jonas Brothers), and The Clearing has a bit of that classic rock feeling to it as you play it from front to back. From the upbeat piano found on the lead single of “Bloom Baby Bloom” that gave Wolf Alice fans a sense of the direction found on the band’s latest effort, to the stylistic choices made by the three other band members to connect things together, The Clearing wasn’t exactly the album I thought would follow after 2021’s Blue Weekend. Instead, the album plays out like a 70’s rock n’ roll romp, much like what Fleetwood Mac cut their teeth to during that decade, with mostly positive results. The LP’s strengths are found in the shimmering sheen and musical polish of “Just Two Girls” and the album closing single of “The Sofa,” while I initially had trouble connecting with the style of “Bloom Baby Bloom” when it released in mid-May. Wolf Alice are trying to develop their sound by looking towards the past for tried and true influences, and they can only hope that their fans are still with them on the latest detour in their trajectory.
The album opener of “Thorns”, much like the lead single, relies mostly on the piano to lay out the textural sound that Wolf Alice were going for on The Clearing, before gradually adding in some strings, bass, drums, and finally guitars to back up Rowsell’s brilliant vocal performance. In the chorus, Rowsell explains, “Ooh, I must be a narcissist / God knows that I can’t resist / To make a song and dance about it / Maybe I’m a masochist / Don’t know why I must persist / To make a song and dance about it,” as her star shimmers as bright as the outfit she dons on the album cover. After the jazz-bar sound of “Just Two Girls”, Wolf Alice take us deeper into the jazz club with some distant chatter in the background of “Leaning Against The Wall” to provide the vibe of walking into an establishment fronted by a captivating and charming singer. The backing band of Wolf Alice seems comfortable in letting Rowsell have the majority of the limelight on The Clearing, and it becomes increasingly evident as the record unfolds that it’s largely her performance that drives the listening experience as a whole.
”Passenger Seat” provides an indie folk song that is rich with acoustic guitars, breezy vocal harmonies between Rowsell, Joff Oddie (guitar), Theo Ellis (bass), and Joel Amey (drums). It’s the only real sign of the band leaning into their core strengths as a unit, and I wish they would’ve delved further into this type of rustic style on The Clearing. “Play It Out” once again returns back to the piano bench and finds Rowsell belting out a vulnerable ballad about not being in control of her own destiny. She sings cautiously, “When I scatter ashes in the river’s water / Will I change my notion of family / How long before I’m happy? / Again and I see those who still surround me,” before bleeding out into a pointed chorus regarding how men set impossible to reach beauty standards for women to “follow.” The harmonies, which I always found to be Wolf Alice’s biggest strength, are largely what drives the repeat value of The Clearing.
”Bread Butter Tea Sugar” features a playful piano bounce over some great bass lines from Ellis, while Joel Amey’s drumming performance remains top notch, and doesn’t dissuade from a song that sounds like The Format. “Safe in the World” features some nice blues guitar from Oddie, and provides the perfect landscape for Rowsell to expand upon her vocal prowess. “Midnight Song” returns back to the indie folk sound found on “Passenger Seat” as Rowsell whisper-sings and croons over a carefully plucked acoustic guitar to bring forth some campfire vibes. The most recent single of “White Horses” is about as raucous as Wolf Alice get on their fourth full-length effort, and it features a pretty cool vocal cadence from Rowsell’s backing bandmates in the verses before she reclaims her spotlight in the choruses. “The Sofa” closes out this latest chapter of Wolf Alice on a bit of a somber note, and one can only hope that on Wolf Alice’s fifth record, they figure out what type of band they want to be for the foreseeable future, as each of their albums has come with a bit of reinvention along the way.