The
London four-piece emerged from lockdown with a soaring triumph of pop rock, brimming with elegantly polished songwriting and confident ambitionMore on the best
music of 2021The 50 best albums of 2021Wolf Alice’s third album could easily have been a disaster. They made it with Markus Dravs, the go-to producer for going big (Arcade
fire, Coldplay, Florence + the Machine). It’s a move that can fit uncomfortably for anyone not born in Bono’s image, as the low-key London four-piece clearly aren’t. Then the pandemic hit. Stuck in Dravs’ studio in
Brussels, they meticulously refined the album, risking sucking the life from it. Somehow they skirted both pitfalls: Blue Weekend is Wolf Alice’s biggest and most immediately satisfying album – cresting shoegaze, woozy classic rock, inventive acoustic songwriting cohered by melodies that aren’t just sticky, but frequently moving. It’s also one that’s seldom as straightforward as it seems, deriving its greatest potency from Ellie Rowsell’s subtly layered songwriting.
She has said that Blue Weekend is her least autobiographical album: whatever the inspiration, it tells a convincingly lived-in story of searching in dark places for answers to some indefinable question; of self-sabotage becoming a logical response to having your worst suspicions confirmed. Rowsell’s lyrics have never been stronger, telling of a breakup with
Friends (brooding opener The Beach), a litany of creeps, misogynists and a cheating lover: “I take you back / Yeah, I know it seems surprising,” she thunders on Lipstick on the Glass with a measure of ecstatic control, as if mirroring her prideful composure.