Had Wolf Alice not picked the particular animalistic name they did, the London band may well have opted for any of the species that can change their colors drastically at will. The London four-piece, which expands to five on tour, has made a rather immediate name for themselves over the course of three albums, establishing early on that they can craft poignant ballads, fierce rock in the tradition of their many UK antecedents, and go big with lush pop songs as thrilling as the best in the genre.
Wolf Alice’s third release, 2021’s Blue Weekend, is arguably the best example of their versatility yet, revisiting sounds they’ve experimented with before to varying degrees, and songs like ‘The Beach II’ taking inspiration from shoegaze in the record’s closing with its repeated, far-away hook. The first few songs of Wolf Alice’s Friday-night set in Boston constitute an absolute whirlwind, beginning with ‘Smile’, one of the most singular tracks from the aforementioned record. Singer and guitarist Ellie Rowsell delivers a cool and supremely confident vocal over the fuzzed-out bass of Theo Ellis. It’s fitting Ellis’ Twitter page sees him identify as the band’s “morale officer”; he’s perpetually in motion, playing to the crowd with at least one foot on the wedge monitor as he leans forward with wide-eyed intensity and a wild array of expressions.
‘You’re a Germ’ is followed by ‘Formidable Cool’, wherein Rowsell rests her guitar and roams the stage with microphone in hand and cord in tow. The “cool” in the lyrics almost never materializes into a word, so whispered is it, only just barely crossing the threshold into existence. In the midsection of the song, guitarist Joff Oddie comes to the front and wrings distorted sounds from his instrument by twisting the tuning pegs. At the song’s noisy climax Rowsell whips her hair around in a fury fit to express the rage in her lyrics, which leverage the metaphor of a cult to outline the false promises that can present themselves in any kind of relationship.
Only after this onslaught does the band slow down for a moment and shift gears into one of their slower tunes, ‘Delicious Things’. It’s a classic tale of a relative ingenue arriving in Hollywood for the first time and discovering the underside of such an aspirational place – once again the issue arises of separating what is fake from what is authentic. Their performance of ‘Bros’ is backed by a montage of tour footage, a genuine ode to friendship that has evolved with the band, and the singing of ‘How Can I Make It OK?’ is a group effort, closed out by drummer Joel Amey singing its final note with one of his sticks held aloft. The refrain of the song’s reverb-laden title is one of Blue Weekend’s most pointed forays into the realm of pop – but the lights soon go down and ominous green text appears on the screen behind the band: IT ISN’T LOUD ENOUGH. It’s the indicator of the motorik, sensory rush to follow in the form of ‘Play the Greatest Hits’, Rowsell’s narrator seeks the noisiest stimuli from without to quell the memory of what lies behind them in memory.
Ellis’ bass sets the heart rate of ‘Silk’, one of the most beauteous moments from My Love is Cool. A sea change from what came previous, its chorus reminds a bit of Lana Del Rey, modern production intersecting with a vocal that seems to come from far-off in both space and time, reverberating through an antiquated phonograph or some such thing, regal and tragic. During ‘Feeling Myself’, the lights are once again reduced, this time to a scant selection of spotlights. Rowsell removes the blazer she’s been wearing and walks with it slowly up the stairs to the platform that holds Amey and keyboardist Ryan Malcolm, the latter of whom leads the song with its smooth introductory line that gradually grows and morphs into something harsher as it gains droning accompaniment from Oddie on guitar. Standing tall atop the platform, jacket in hand, one spotlight settles on Rowsell and then disappears with the final note. This brief absence of light bridges into what might be considered the final act of the band’s main set. Rowsell is bathed in red for ‘Moaning Lisa Smile’, and this gives way to the multiphasic title track that closed out their second record, Visions of a Life. The song in its first half seems to be constantly daring itself to escalate further, driven along by the increasingly-complex designs in Amey’s drumming.
Rowsell kneels on the floor during the penultimate song of this act, ‘No Hard Feelings’. Also positioned in the same place on the album, it’s a heartfelt breakup song absent of any artifice, taking solace only in that the parting of two lovers can be peaceful. Its final line harkens back to the first track on the album, ‘The Beach’, which says: “We don’t need to battle / and we both shall win”, beginning to tie up the album’s loose narrative structure by perhaps suggesting that it began in media res. After this quietly cathartic moment, the scale of the night turns huge again with the closer ‘Giant Peach’, a pure distillation of Wolf Alice’s conception of hard-driving rock. Ellis shakes the sound of the final note from the body of his bass, and the band heads offstage.
When Rowsell and company return, she asks: “Who are you to ask for anything more?” It’s the opening line of ‘The Last Man on Earth’, growing from simple piano to a cinematic chorus in defiance of self-obsession, the empty triumph of being desperate for attention when it will ultimately lay plain only how thoroughly one has cultivated his flaws. Phone flashlights – and one actual lighter, somehow – come up in raised hands and slowly bob side to side in the great tradition of ballads like this. And in the final moments of the night, the band delivers ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’, the title a reference to the little emojis or xo-s at the end of a text that would unambiguously declare the true feelings that Rowsell’s internal monologue tries to convince her to repress. If Wolf Alice made a movie called Visions of a Life, this song could soundtrack the scene at the end where the two leads face each other and truly see their intentions for the first time, cutting to black at the will-they-won’t-they moment, with the hopeful implication that indeed they will.
Wolf Alice’s ability to craft absolutely anything from blisteringly-brief rock songs to swelling epics that encompass huge swathes of human experience is, unquestionably, their biggest asset as a band. Hell, they even put out an EP of stripped-down “lullaby” versions of some songs from Blue Weekend in 2022. They are a group that wholeheartedly chart their own course, a quality of clarity that Rowsell’s narrators share in their most triumphant moments.
