The music press has a tendency to build young bands up to be the next best thing and then drop them even quicker than you can say ‘who even listens to albums in full anymore?’
Blue Weekend, Wolf Alice’s third album is as strident a ‘Yuk Foo’ that the band could possibly deliver at this point, and at this time, and further cements the Londoners as one of the most potent acts in British music.
If that sounds a little too gushing, then please take another listen to the sweeping Last Man On Earth as it builds to it’s incredible crescendo via the wonderful couplet “Every book you take that you dust off from the shelf/Has lines between lines between lines that you read about yourself.”...
Still not convinced? The try the barely contained vitriol of the Elastica influenced Smile, including all the sharp U-turns and snarling lyrics within, “Did you think I was a puppet on strings?/Wind her up and this honeybee sings.”
Produced by Marcus Dravs (Florence and the Machine, Arcade Fire, Coldplay), Blue Weekend sees Wolf Alice leaning into the wind and truly letting go. Whereas on the Mercury Prize winning Visions Of Life, there was the sense that guitarist, vocalist Ellie Roswell was hanging back, keeping some of her personal themes close to her chest, not so on this refreshingly honest and sometimes brutal collection of songs.
Delicious Things, up there with the best WA have recorded, is a delirious sprint through LA and all the hedonism that one would expect goes with it, as Ellie leaves behind ‘pulling pints’ and ‘cashing tills’.
It is not all angst and ire, however, though Play The Greatest Hits has a rip-roaring baseline that thunders from the speakers, The Beach II which rounds things up, Roswell lilts, “The tide comes in as it must go out, consistent like the laughter/Of the girls on the beach, my girls on the beach, happy ever after”.
Not only is Roswell’s story telling vastly improved but the band have never sounded better as a collective. There a million ideas bursting forth, yet the band charge through all the winds and stylistic leaps in their path with a playful verve. Sounds don’t always head in the direction you think and the results are a constant surprise, rewarding repeat listens.
Blue Weekend will be sure to top many a Best Of list come the end of year awards and we here in Luxembourg can only hope that they band return to play the GD in 2022, having smashed den A in 2016.
Blue Weekend is out now on Dirty Hit.
