After the chaos of your twenties, over the threshold of your thirties, you’ll often find a sense of calm. You’ve spent a decade of adulthood figuring out who you are and what you want from life through trial and messy error. Now, more settled in your sense of self, you get to take a breather and enjoy what you’ve happened upon through the madness.
‘The Clearing’, Wolf Alice’s sublime fourth album, represents that moment of clarity and peace, and leaving your youthful turmoil behind – even if you know there’s more disorder to come before you pop your clogs. Fittingly, it’s a record that builds on everything the four-piece have done so far on their musical journey and moves it forward in an assured, accomplished way that can only be achieved with time and experience.
After the reception to ‘Blue Weekend’’s ‘Delicious Things’ and ‘The Last Man On Earth’, the four-piece were emboldened to lean into “more song-y songs”, as guitarist Joff Oddie told NME earlier this year. ‘The Clearing’, then, swaps the harder, faster side of Wolf Alice’s oeuvre for more layered, nuanced, slower-tempo songs. They might not rattle your eardrums like ‘Smile’ or ‘Play The Greatest Hits’, but the songwriting within them is so strong, they still make just as big an impression.
Opener ‘Thorns’ feels like a sister song to ‘The Last Man On Earth’, both in sound and in subject, taking that track’s piano-driven lead. Where the 2021 song touched on the narcissism of the world in general and our main character obsession with seeing ourselves within the culture we consume, this time frontwoman Ellie Rowsell turns the lens solely on herself. “Did it help to take the thorn out / Telling the whole world you’d been hurt,” she sings scornfully of airing her dirty laundry in her music.
There are echoes of what’s come before on ‘Passenger Seat’, its shuffling Americana bearing subtle hints of ‘Leaving You’, one of the band’s early tracks. ‘Midnight Song’, meanwhile, sprouts from the roots of second album ‘Visions Of A Life’’s ‘After The Zero Hour’, folkier, prettier and grander. This isn’t retreading old ideas; it’s staying true to their musical DNA while letting it evolve.
A constant throughout Wolf Alice’s 15-year journey has been Rowsell’s ability to write so incisively about life and love of all kinds. She’s better than ever on ‘The Clearing’, sharply recreating the positive affirmations of female friendship (“I said you’re so right and you’re so wise”) on the warm Cali-pop of ‘Just Two Girls’ and grappling with the biological clock and society’s expectations of women ageing on ‘Play It Out’.
‘Leaning Against The Wall’ delivers another world-beating love song – not quite as dizzying as ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’, but gently evocative enough that it’ll make you want to fall head over heels for someone ASAP. “You put my world in slo-mo,” she murmurs dreamily before Oddie’s gorgeous finger-picked guitar melts away into glistening synth drones. “You put my name up in lights.”
It’s not just Rowsell who shines here, though. Drummer Joel Amey leads ‘White Horses’ – his first song on lead vocals since ‘My Love Is Cool’’s ‘Swallowtail’. It’s a heartfelt reflection on heritage, family and identity that rolls on a foundation of psych and folk, Rowsell taking over vocals from Amey’s verses to declare: “Know who I am, that’s important to me.”
‘The Clearing’ is the kind of album that could only be written after the dust has settled on your twenties and the post-30 clarity sets in. It is, as ‘Bread Butter Tea Sugar’ and ‘The Sofa’ affirm, a record that doesn’t gloss over flaws, but accepts them and revels in them (“Don’t want a dish without salt / Bread without butter / If it’s bad for me, good, I feel bad suits me better,” Rowsell sings on the former). Just as we all (hopefully) get older and wiser with every year, Wolf Alice are the kind of band that keep on getting better with every record, and here, they raise the bar on themselves once again.
Details
- Record label: Columbia Records
- Release date: August 22, 2025