Wolf Alice : The Clearing
Why is 1970s-style, West Coast soft rock everywhere right now? From major acts like Haim and Clairo to the Tony-sweeping play Stereophonic (a thinly-veiled retelling of Fleetwood Mac’s troubled recording of Rumours) to the first AI “band” that generated worldwide headlines; interest in this era of music is currently as high as it’s been since its heyday. To look at it positively; it could be argued that the now-entrenched poptimism mindset has allowed us to reevaluate the acts of this period and see the cool genius within their eternally resonant emotions and grand pop rock instrumentation. To look at it more cynically, a case can certainly be made that the acute algorithmic curation of streaming platforms is forcing this easy-going, background-friendly music onto our omnipresent technological radars. It’s no coincidence that the first notable AI “band,” the aforementioned The Velvet Sundown, were created in this algorithm-baiting image.
London’s Wolf Alice are the latest band to channel this sound. Despite the fact that their previous full-length Blue Weekend only came out in 2021, The Clearing weirdly feels like a comeback album for the Mercury Prize-winning band, given their recent reinvention. It says a lot about the world today that four years actually does feel like an entire era ago. As the recent grainy official images of the band show, in which they’re decked out in leather boots and jean jackets, The Clearing is a moderate-scaled gear shift, away from the band’s anthemic alt rock toward ’70s-style pop-rock grandeur. Think big strings, jaunty pianos, shimmering acoustic guitars and belted vocals, in service of a set of ultra-1970s aesthetic parameters that makes for a shockingly dull album.
The album’s star, by some distance, is vocalist Ellie Roswell. Her voice is frequently electrifying, amplified further when contrasted with the familiar and retro music. From her show-stopping high notes on lead single “Bloom Baby Bloom” to the soaring, operatic “Midnight Song” to the quiet power that she summons up on album highlight “White Horses,” she gives The Clearing its sole source of punch and spark. Other than that, this is a flat, uninspired album that, beyond the airy “White Horses” and unignorably grand “Bloom Baby Bloom” never even comes close to catching fire. The soft rock stylistic shift turns in some astonishingly beige tracks. “Passenger Seat” sounds like a Taylor Swift album track lifted off the cutting room floor, “Play It Out” is an anonymous ballad with trite lyrics about “castles in the hourglass sand” and “Safe In The World” sounds like a tepid amalgamation of all the all the worst retro imitators that have plagued indie rock in the 21st century.
The Clearing’s most damning crime is that, if it weren’t for the singular power of Ellie Roswell, much of it could very easily be the work of an AI. The music, almost entirely, lacks that most human quality; our desire to be creative and original and bring new ideas into the world. It recalls the most recent Arctic Monkeys albums, which similarly display a band that look fresh out of ideas and have seemingly lost the urge to craft potent, commanding music. Instead, it just feels like being stuck in Roswell’s “hourglass,” where the time resets back to the mid-1970s with every predictable flip.
Label: RCA
Year: 2025
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