Wolf Alice, The Clearing Review: Britain’s Finest Band at Their Fearless Peak

WOLF ALICE

The Clearing (Mushroom Music / RCA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wolf Alice have never stood still. Since forming 15 years ago as an acoustic duo, they’ve grown into the best bloody band in England — some (i.e. this writer) would say the world. From the Grammy-nominated My Love Is Cool to the Mercury-winning Visions of a Life and the BRIT-crowned Blue Weekend, they’ve proven themselves not just as critical darlings but as a generational voice.

With Blue Weekend, recorded in the shadow of lockdown, they reached for grandeur and cinematic sweep. Now, with The Clearing, their major-label debut, they go even further, adding new colours to one of the most varied sonic palettes in modern rock without compromising any of their previous punch. It’s a brave and fearless leap into something even more accessible than the last album — considered and expansive, confident and self-assured. Written largely at the piano in Seven Sisters, North London, and brought to life in Los Angeles with Grammy-winner Greg Kurstin (producer to Adele, Paul McCartney, Foo Fighters and Beck), the record trades snarling guitars for widescreen 70s-inspired pop and rock. Fleetwood Mac, Pentangle, Steely Dan and The Beatles were all references apparently — but always filtered through Wolf Alice’s sharp edges and emotional candour. You can almost hear the stubborn Reddit complainers noting that there isn’t a ‘Smile’ or a ‘Play The Greatest Hits’ within earshot.

But Wolf Alice are always going to be the band moving forward. This is not reinvention for reinvention’s sake. It’s ambitious transcendence.

Play The Clearing featuring individually shot lyric videos

Thorns

Opening quietly, this is reportedly the Blue Weekend-era song held back, now making it the bridge to The Clearing. Its piano-led balladry recalls the former’s melancholy, but here Rowsell is sharper, more self-aware: “I must be a narcissist / God knows I can’t resist.” Grand, ironic, and a curtain-raiser that signals a band moving on without forgetting where they’ve been.

Bloom Baby Bloom

The first single and perhaps the most overstuffed pop song in their catalogue, clearly designed for the radio — and it’s glorious. Rowsell described it as “a rock song inspired by Axl Rose, but from a woman’s perspective. I’ve used the guitar as a shield in the past… but I wanted to focus on my voice as a rock instrument. It’s been freeing to put the guitar down and reach a point where I don’t feel like I need to prove that I’m a musician.” She reaches for the heavens on the pre-chorus, perhaps her most dangerously ambitious vocal line yet. Whatta tune!

Just Two Girls

A breezy ode to female friendship, starting with envy before quickly shifting to equal admiration. It’s overt pop, piano-led and positively drenched in Cali-pop sunshine. Ice cream on Santa Monica Boulevard in song form: validating and warm. The moment you realise this isn’t Blue Weekend II. This is something else entirely.

Leaning Against The Wall

Beyond-brilliant and the most experimental track on The Clearing, it’s a love song set on the dancefloor, not for the dancefloor. Starts with an acoustic folk strum (perhaps another sonic jolt for old fans) before dissolving into an euphoric dream-pop shimmer. Rowsell exudes “You put my name in slow mo, you put my name up in lights” — a line that feels destined for festival fields. Experimental vocal samples and an untreated drum break in the outro push this beauty into bold new territory.

Passenger Seat

A car indicator and door slam drop you into a jaunty, infectious strum — subtle enough to dodge an obvious cliché. Rowsell recently told The Guardian that she is “less worried” about her future as a frontwoman than she used to be, partly thanks to a selection of inspirational peers, including Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek and Self Esteem. All three of those women are knowingly camp and committed to mining cool from unlikely places — all of which Wolf Alice are doing in their flamboyant new era. For some unexplainable reason, it evoked a feeling close to ‘Bodyguard’, a recent Cowboy Carter highlight from Beyoncé. Lesser artists would build a whole inferior career around a song this catchy. For Rowsell and her band of besties, it’s just another shade in the palette.

Play It Out

Here’s the gut-punch. Rowsell reflects on ageing, societal pressure, and the expectation of motherhood. Not angry, just quietly defiant: “Just let me play it out.” It’s deeply moving, an anthem of gentle resistance.

Bread Butter Tea Sugar

As English as its title, it’s a jaunty Beatles-inspired piano jam married with huge ELO-esque bombast in the string-led outro. But not before Joff Oddie unleashes his most classic rock guitar solo yet, a first for him. “That’s the beauty of being in Wolf Alice,” he told us recently. “You never know what you’re going to fricken get.” The band sound delightfully comfortable and at home.

Safe In The WorldA backwards glance at love, tender and heartwarming. It uncannily starts in chilled Khruangbin territory with drifting guitar harmonics, before Rowsell lays herself bare in one of her most open vocal performances — never indulging the obvious melody, instead achieving something unique. Subtle, sublime, and full of hidden corners.

Midnight Song

An ode to Rowsell’s grandmother, confirmed by Joel Amey in our recent chat. Folky guitars and dramatic tom fills frame a goosebump-inducing lyric — intimate but universal, simple but devastatingly accurate.

White Horses

Speaking of Amey, he takes the lead on this one — his first since My Love Is Cool’s ‘Swallowtail’. “Music and love have magnetic properties,” he sings over a krautrock pulse. He’s a singer of his own heritage here, something that has eluded him until recently. Rowsell joins with a pre-chorus hook like Dolores O’Riordan fronting The B-52’s, and together they build to one of the sharpest refrains on the record. Its placement as the penultimate track is a stroke of genius. As they sing the final refrain together, the truest sense of unity emerges: this is truly a powerful band, demonstrating a strength as solid as each of their parts.

The Sofa

The closer, my God, it is arguably the most gorgeous moment in their entire discography. “Hope I can accept the wild thing in me” evokes something of a moment which harks back to ‘Bros’. This time, however, Rowsell is horizontal on the sofa and reflecting as the piano shimmers and the strings sweep. It feels like Hans Zimmer walked through the studio, or George Martin’s ghost whispered in Kurstin’s ear. It ends the record with a sense of “Give us more, give us more now!”

Wolf Alice, The Clearing Review

My Love Is Cool, Visions of a Life and Blue Weekend have all been near-on, if not perfect, albums — certainly amongst the toppermost highlights of their respective years — so it’s difficult to call The Clearing Wolf Alice’s best album, yet when nostalgia clings so tightly to the earlier work. But it is. Britain’s finest band have once again proven that evolution isn’t a risk — it’s their greatest strength.

If their early records soundtracked the chaos of early adulthood, The Clearing is a perfect snapshot of a band stepping into something steadier.

Where Blue Weekend lingered in heartbreak and doubt, this album feels lighter, wiser, and surer of itself. They’ve raised their own bar yet again — it isn’t just their fourth album, it’s their boldest statement and their most fearless leap forward. They are moving into household-name territory without sabotaging their credibility. Rowsell keeps growing: she is such an extraordinary singer and lyricist, it would almost be a disservice being in a band if not for the three men that have supported her growth and allowed it to take the forefront. And that’s almost the entire point. This is a band that, while led cautiously by Rowsell, are a perfect sum of their parts. They are, quite simply, Britain’s finest — fearless and still writing the soundtrack to our lives.

With The Clearing, Wolf Alice don’t just step out of the woods — they take the crown, fearlessly. Few bands manage to soundtrack a generation once; Wolf Alice keep proving they can do it again and again. And while this album would have towered over 1977, in 2025 it feels just as vital — a timeless record from a band in control, further extending and still operating at the peak of their powers.

Wolf Alice, The Clearing review