Equal parts subdued and sentimental, the lead single for Wolf Alice’s Blue Weekend was a shock to many listeners and longtime fans. ‘The Last Man On Earth’ encapsulates the ways in which the band has managed to grow and mature with their audience. Despite the change in sound from distorted grunge and rebel-yelling to piano-led ballads and 60s phantasma, they’ve done a pretty good job of changing genre lanes.
It has been more than a decade since the band has come to be acknowledged as the paragon of 2010s NME indie. Frontwoman Ellie Roswell’s lyrics told stories of messy nights out and late buses home, which resonated with so many young people whoexperienced those events tangentially to her. Those lyrics were equally theirs as they were hers. Blue Weekend is still distinctly Wolf Alice — how could it not? — but it marks a sonic and lyrical maturity that couldn’t arrive with a warmer welcome.
Speaking to getting older, guitarist Joff Oddie says with a laugh “well we haven’t grown as people so I’m glad to hear that the music’s got a bit better.”. From his home in Cornwall he muses, “I think there is a certain confidence that builds up after you’ve been doing this for a while. Not an ego kind of confidence, but a kind of assurance towards certain things, certain techniques.”
Bassist Theo Ellis bounces this confidence back, “When I listened to the music in sequence, especially when it was tracklisted finally, I felt very proud.” He continues, “I felt like we surpassed our expectations and the standard we set in terms of songwriting — I think that hopefully that does mean a bit more maturity.” The band don’t reject the ferality of their early releases on Blue Weekend.Cuts like ‘Smile’ or ‘Play the Greatest Hits’ honour their inner wildness , but it’s more refined this time around.
The band notes the vulnerability that their first single opened with. “The idea of it being a single was really appealing to all of us because it encapsulated a lot of sides of the record but it wasn’t something that people wouldn’t necessarily expect as the first thing for us to do,” Ellis comments. “It was a bit of a curveball, an exciting risk to take that I think has paid off, to be honest.”
“We’re tricking them! We’re fucking with everyone by putting out a piano ballad!” Oddie jokes. “The first time I heard it I thought it was going to be a very important song. From the very first listen. And I think it captures a certain level of intrigue that I hope has got people excited about what’s to come.”
After spending the bulk of their formative years on tour circuits promoting their previous releases, the band’s hiatus came as a shock. In the process of recording Blue Weekend, the band were struck with the need to reconfigure their relationship with each other outside of festival stages and fan encounters. Following a night out that can only be described as ‘ramshackle’, Wolf Alice camped out at an abandoned church in Somerset to work on their fledgling demos.
“It took us a while to find our feet again and connect with family and friends that we haven’t seen in a while and to get some kind of semblance of life back,” Oddie explains. “Before we decided to throw all of that away again and go to Brussels,” he laughs. While the music industry has been exhausted with any and all discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic, this ultimately has long-lasting effects for touring bands who are credited for their sparkling live shows. “Unfortunately the world’s not going to let us at the moment, but we’re going to be all guns blazing. Wolf Alice playing gigs everywhere, in two countries on the same day, if we can,” Ellis grins.
With the title plucked from an observation made in the comfort of an Uber ride in Brussels, the title of the band’s third venture is best reflected in its encompassing sound. “Like all good things, it stayed around and it was natural and it felt organic,” Oddie notes. “It was that good balance of Happysad that I think suits Wolf Alice pretty well.” Despite its idiosyncrasies, familiarity and growth is the rule of Blue Weekend.
