Wolf Alice – The Clearing (Mushroom) (13th Floor Album Review)
With The Clearing, their fourth album, Wolf Alice channel every lesson from the past decade into a record that feels elemental in its confidence. This is a band deep in the groove of their own creative force.
The pop, punk, folk and other influences they once scattered across tracks are now integrated with precision within a modern version of the classic 70s rock template. The results, intensity held in tension, beauty sharpened by resistance, vulnerability delivered without flinching.
Each member plays a crucial role in that balance. Joff Oddie’s guitar work shifts effortlessly from nimble fingerpicking to serrated riffs, setting the emotional tone across the album. Theo Ellis anchors every track with bass lines that alternately brood, roll, and rumble, shaping the band’s dynamic swing between weight and lift. Joel Amey brings elasticity to the drums, constantly adjusting pace and feel to match the emotional terrain. At the centre of it all is Ellie Rowsell, whose vocal command is astonishing. Her clarity, range, and emotional intelligence elevate everything around her. Whether snarling, whispering, or soaring, she ensures the songs resonate.
The album opens with Thorns, a coiled and restless introduction. Orchestrated violins rise like barbed wire above a piano lead, and gentle drum shuffle. The vocal sits just slightly out of reach, daring the listener to come closer as Rowsell tells a tale of narcissism and obsession. It lays the groundwork for Bloom Baby Bloom, a defining track in their catalogue. This is Wolf Alice at their most volatile and articulate. The lyrics tear through expectation, “Do you want me to show you who I am?” while the track shapeshifts through swagger, menace, and ultimate defiance.
Just Two Girls follows, all warmth, shimmer, and joy, on a song about female friendships. Where earlier records sometimes moved between styles with surprising shifts, here the band glide.
As the album progresses, emotional pressure builds inward. Play It Out is striking as piano and echoing vocals hover over submerged tension until the understated line “just let me play it out” lands with enormous weight. That track, like much of the record, draws you into its emotional orbit and refuses to let you drift.
Bread Butter Tea Sugar carries momentum through clipped rhythms and a tone that stays direct without rushing. Safe in the World follows with subtle strings and then holds you in the embrace of a warm, steady groove. The clarity of the arrangements throughout the album is remarkable. Nothing is overfilled. Every sound has purpose.
Midnight Song and Leaning Against the Wall form a quiet bridge across the second half of the record. Both are stripped back and confident with an earned sparseness.
Then White Horses arrives and lifts the roof. It’s the most immediate song on the record, propulsive, melodic, and bursting with conviction. “I do not need no rooting, I carry home with me” is a key line in this song about the search for identity, set against a relentless rhythm section and layered arrangements that build without ever losing shape. It’s one of the band’s best songs to date.
The album closes with The Sofa, a final act of resolution. “Sometimes I just want to be no one thing / the intellectual beauty queen / and a wild thing” encapsulates the entire philosophy of The Clearing. Where past albums moved between identities, this one inhabits them all at once. There’s no need to choose.
The visual world surrounding the album reinforces this clarity. The band appear in woodland or modest home settings, dressed in denim and leather, the attire of classic rock. Like the music, these images are deliberate, cohesive, and unforced. They’re not playing rock band. They are the one.
Across eleven tracks, Wolf Alice deliver a record that is expansive, emotionally exact, and deeply assured. The Clearing is a statement. This is what it sounds like when a great band grows without compromise, when control brings clarity. This is Wolf Alice’s most complete and commanding record yet.
John Bradbury
The Clearing is out today via Mushroom Music
