Wolf Alice

By Eric Evans

50 years and three weeks ago Dylan went electric, a sonic transition from folk to rock met with astonishment and horror. You’d think half a century would be enough time to make such a change less noteworthy but there it is, cited in near every story about Wolf Alice—the UK’s hottest new thing, one of a mere handful of bands to come out of Glastonbury 2015 with major buzz. The band’s co-founders, guitarist Joff Oddie and guitarist/singer Ellie Rowsell, did indeed start as an acoustic folk act and there are hints of that past in the band’s songcraft: tender moments featuring delicate instrumentation and a clear, clean vocal that could easily be applied to quieter material. But Wolf Alice is a musical product of the 20-teens when genre can be as fluid as gender. Bands are less inclined to stay within the narrow confines of this or that category and there are few examples of this as pronounced as My Love Is Cool, Wolf Alice’s debut album. Since adding bassist Theo Ellis and drummer/vocalist Joel Amey the band’s sound has grown to encompass the howl and squeal of grunge, the sneer of punk, the chug of rock, the drone of shoegaze, and whatever else suits them on a song-by-song basis. They’re part Curve, part Sonic Youth, part Blondie, and all right: different as they are from one another, any of the songs on the record could be a single.

Opening for the band was “unGoogleable” band S, fronted by singer/guitarist Jenn Ghetto. Part of the excellent roster on Seattle’s Hardly Art, S occupies a space similar to that of labelmate Colleen Green: the music is mostly mellow, personal, melodic, played sincerely and low-key joyfully. Part of Ghetto’s charm is her perceived awkwardness when addressing the crowd—Pinteresque pauses, non-jokes and band in-jokes, unfinished thoughts. Already swelteringly hot during the opening set, she looked down at her be-jeaned legs and with characteristic understatement told the crowd “Kinda hot today… I was wearing shorts earlier but… didn’t wanna expose my legs up here.” Ghetto and bandmates played a good chunk of their most recent album Cool Choices. Good stuff.

Wolf Alice took the stage in Portland, Oregon with a ton of swagger borrowed against the performance to come and then, song by song, paid it back with interest. Playing most of My Love Is Cool as well as “Storms” from the Creature Songs EP, the band started hot and never slowed, shredding for a solid 45 minutes before encores. “Your Loves Whore” roared; “Moaning Lisa Smile” chugged and made the most of it’s loud/quiet/loud Nirvana dynamics; “Lisbon” built to it’s powerful extended coda, tearing along… Wolf Alice’s studio work is clean and crisp for radio but comes alive with stage amplification and improvisation—everything louder, a touch faster, and very definitely meaner. Rowsell’s vocals have expressive range on the records and she’s more than capable of recreating all of it onstage, from the gentle twinkle to the guttural howl. Eddie and Ellis are no part shoegazer, leaping and lurching around the stage as if wrestling every note from their instruments. During the instrumental portions of songs Rowsell is right there with them, the trio twisting and thrashing yet somehow never colliding. They look and sound like a rock band riding high on success and skill and youth. Only “Swallowtail”, with lead vocals by Amey, seemed to interrupt the natural flow of the evening but by the song’s slow-built double-speed guitar-frenzy finale all was forgiven.

There are a number of classic bands that took the UK by storm yet failed to hit in America: The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Blur, Oasis… all are known and well-regarded within music circles but they never broke the States open. It’s a bit early to say whether or not Wolf Alice can break through but based on how adroitly they owned the Hawthorne Theater crowd on a Tuesday night, it would be unwise to bet against them.