The London Mercury Prize winners step it up on their major label debut
Wolf Alice have made their return with the huge and adventurous new single ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ and details of their fourth album, ‘The Clearing’.
Having been teasing fans of their comeback for some weeks, the London four-piece mark a huge step up from their acclaimed debut album ‘My Love Is Cool’, Mercury Prize-winning second album ‘Visions Of A Life’ and the cinematic expanse of 2022’s ‘Blue Weekend’ with their Greg Kurstin produced major label debut ‘The Clearing’ – leaning on a golden palette of ’70s sounds with launch single ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’.
“I wanted a rock song, to focus on the performance element of a rock song and sing like Axl Rose, but to be singing a song about being a woman,” said frontwoman Ellie Rowsell.
“I’ve used the guitar as a shield in the past, playing it has perhaps been some way to reject the ‘girl singer in band’ trope, but I wanted to focus on my voice as a rock instrument so 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.”
The video for ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ is a collaboration with director Colin Solal Cardo – known for his work with the likes of Charli XCX, Robyn, Christine & The Queens and Phoenix. The clip plays with imagery from Bob Fosse’s cult 1979 film All That Jazz, and features Rowswell in the middle of a host of dancers arranged by Emmy Award-winning choreographer Ryan Heffington (Euphoria, Sia, Kenzo + Margaret Qualley).
In a five-star review of the track, NME concluded: “‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ is a fitting song for Wolf Alice to return with. It speaks to coming into your own, rising up through the chaos of life and emerging completely sure of yourself. ‘But I bloom, baby bloom / Watch me and you’ll see just what I’m worth,’ Rowsell declares, serenely self-assured. ‘Yes, I bloom, baby bloom / Every flower needs to neighbour with the dirt.’
“After three albums of building and expanding their world, and experiencing the ups and downs of the music industry, it feels like the band are ready to stake their claim as one of their generation’s most important acts. Now, Wolf Alice are undoubtedly in full bloom.”
In the band’s announcement, ‘The Clearing’ is described as “both playful and serious, ironic and straight-talking” and “a progressive shift from a band whose exploration of love, loss and human connection has already articulated the coming-of-age experience for a whole generation”.
“It’s a classic pop/rock album that nods to the ‘70s while remaining rooted firmly in the present,” they continued. “If Fleetwood Mac wrote an album today in North London, you’d get somewhere close to this run of effortlessly grand tracks, each as distinct as the last.
“The Clearing encapsulates that freeing feeling of finding a moment of peace and clarity, having survived the freewheeling frivolity of your 20s, emerging into your future and is a portrait of Wolf Alice standing on the precipice of a new decade in both life and art.”
Wolf Alice release ‘The Clearing’ on Friday August 29 via Sony Music – pre order it here. The band will play a trio of intimate Irish shows next week before appearances at BBC Radio One’s Big Weekend and Glastonbury 2025.
This week also saw Wolf Alice guitarist Joff Oddie appear in Parliament to speak out on behalf of the Featured Artists Coalition in the battle to save the UK’s grassroots music scene. With music venues closing, the rising costs of being an artist and the loss of touring opportunities brought about by post-Brexit complications, Oddie warned that “one of the things we risk is that music becomes a middle and upper class sport”.
“We’re already seeing that representation decline,” he argued. “There are all kinds of statistics showing that’s gone down of the last 15-20 years – especially for people outside the south east of England.
“It’s costly to build a career, and the build a career you need to go on the road. Once you get past a point, there is money to be made in the industry. Music is big business, but if we don’t fund that from the beginning then we aren’t going to get big artists.”
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