(Credits: Wolf Alice)
Thu 28 August 2025 6:00, UK
There were two things Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell was starkly aware of going into the new record. One, that they reached a level of maturity most indie bands never reach. And two, that she no longer wished to hide her rockstar antics behind a guitar.
Wolf Alice have the kind of successes most bands their age can only dream of. Multiple awards, countless endorsements and billing alongside some of the biggest names in the current festival cycle, to name a few. But at the same time, they’re also behind in some ways. And one of those is because of their latest transition into maturing.
For Rowsell, this came with the realisation she wasn’t 19 anymore. When Wolf Alice first hit the scene, it was with the same bands that haven’t really gotten anywhere since. Or ones who haven’t grown the way Wolf Alice has over the years. Like Circa Waves, Alt-J, Catfish and the Bottlemen. They still did well for themselves, but not the way they probably wanted at the time. Not in the Wolf Alice way, where they’re still talked about in most corners today.
But that’s not to say Wolf Alice had it easy. They hit their rough patches too. What’s mattered is how they’ve taken those knocks head-on, never shied away – and that’s what’s carried them to where they are now. Take Rowsell, for example. She might not have realised it at the time, but she was figuring out how to navigate being a woman fronting an indie band.
And part of that came with using her guitar as something to hide behind, something as a distraction that didn’t come with a hot spotlight solely on her. She was the face of the band, as she is now. But back then, it’s almost like she could only give away pieces of herself at a time, and not lean into the rockstar visage she’d eventually embrace wholeheartedly in her 30s.
Wolf Alice pose for new album artwork. (Credits: Rachel Fleminger Hudson)
This is precisely what we see with the jump from earlier sets to ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’. A song literally about the prospect of blooming into your true self, Rowesell channelled Axl Rose and other rock powerhouses in reaching a new level of performance art. “I’ve used the guitar as a shield in the past, playing it has perhaps been some way to reject the ‘girl singer in band’ trope, but I wanted to focus on my voice as a rock instrument so it’s been freeing to put the guitar down and reach a point where I don’t feel like I need to prove that I’m a musician,” she said.
Though framed as two different things, this came hand-in-hand with growing older, maturing. And while scary, especially when it comes to women in the industry, growing older and embracing it – navigating it when it feels like the worst thing in the world – is precisely why Wolf Alice are still around today. And why many other indie bands are not. The Clearing wasn’t just Rowsell hitting the studio like some kind of reborn rock operatic. It was her thinking, not for the first time, about how her reputation impacts her art. Or more specifically, how the expectations of others make her both a contradiction of and an adherence to the modern musical landscape.
In ‘Play It Out’, Rowsell pours in some lines that would put a shiver into even the coldest of hearts. It’s poetic genius, the way she talks about being a woman with such lyrical finesse, saying things like, “When my body can no longer make a mother of me,” and “Rock the cradle with a babeless hand”, and “Just watch me build castles in the hourglass sand. Might still hear screaming in the hallway from the empty pram.”
All of this probably points to why they chose such a liminal-sounding album title, with the clearing being somewhere between everywhere and nowhere. The place where Rowsell can spotlight her insecurities and make great out of it because it’s so honest. And this stretches to other parts of the band, too. Because even as Joel Amey takes the lead on ‘White Horses’, he still uses his own life and experience to drive their narrative, taking Wolf Alice somewhere they’ve never been before. Somewhere uncertain, but all the better for it.
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