What has happened to Wolf Alice?
For a period Wolf Alice were a new sonic brainwave to an indie rock drought, stemming from a slew of EPs in the early part of the 2010s to three hit albums. Initially consisting of singer Ellie Rowsell and guitarist Joff Oddie as a folk duo beginning life in 2010, bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey joined their ranks two years later to invigorate the band with an electrifying rock power.
In the 2015 debut album, My Love is Cool, Wolf Alice made it clear they were there for the long haul in the music industry through the strength of tunes like ‘Giant Peach’ and the antidote anthem to teenage angst, ‘Bros’. After nailing down an instant indie cult following, they were only bound to move on to new supersonic heights from this point.
They did so two years later with 2017’s seminal Visions of a Life, universally acclaimed by fans and critics alike, and bagging the band the coveted Mercury Prize to seal the deal that they were truly the new forces to be reckoned with in the realm of the rock music canon.
Only seeming to follow on this upward trajectory with their third album, Blue Weekend, in 2021, anyone would be forgiven for wholeheartedly believing that Wolf Alice would still continue to hog the indie limelight for years to come and that the band themselves would be keen to capitalise on all the acclaim rooted in their favour. However, since that third instalment in the trilogy almost four years ago now, things have gone suspiciously quiet on the Wolf Alice front, essentially causing more questions to arise than there are any answers.
So, where have Wolf Alice been?
The real reason behind their sonic absence, unfortunately, may be rooted in the all-too-common wrath of record label logistics. For Wolf Alice’s three existing albums, they were signed to Dirty Hit alongside the likes of The 1975, Pale Waves, and The Japanese House, all of whom had orbited in similar musical orbits both in the studio and on stage up to that point.
However, with the band’s tenure with Dirty Hit ending after the release of Blue Weekend, it begs the question of whether possibly things had suddenly headed south between the label or, worse, the members of Wolf Alice themselves. It didn’t seem likely because their terms with Dirty Hit were always for a three-album deal, but it still didn’t answer the question of why the band seemed to be hanging at a loose end.
Then, this time, the band made their biggest industry move yet in the form of signing a major deal with Columbia Records – but even still, the whisperings of new music have not been forthcoming since. With a Mercury Prize-winning and number one band now on their hands, it seems obvious that Columbia would want to get their money’s worth, but it’s fair to say that the ongoing silence is raising the pulse the more time goes on.
Let’s keep sight of the positives. If Wolf Alice have been working on new material for so long, their new label would surely give them a fresh lease of life to take the world back over by storm, and if so, hopefully, we won’t have too much longer to wait. Otherwise, we should march on those studios to find out the answers ourselves.
