Wolf Alice: Taking Success In Stride

Wolf Alice has always been about the unexpected. Granted, many bands tend to make that claim, but in this case, the evidence is clearly there. While their new album, Blue Weekend, reflects their anthemic, often over-the-top approach, they began life as a duo, a scenario that would suggest a far more measured approach.  

Despite those origins, they quickly evolved after expanding their ranks and formed a quartet, one that consists of singer Ellie Rowsell, guitarist Joff Oddie, bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey. Their early EPs gave way to three finely crafted full-length albums—My Love Is Cool in 2015, its successor, Visions of a Life in 2017, and, of course, their current offering. 

While the band traces its origins back a decade, it might still seem as though their success has come quickly. My Love Is Cool climbed to No. 2 in the British pop charts, a remarkable feat for a debut album, and one of its tracks, “Moaning Lisa Smile” garnered a Grammy nomination. The accolades continued when Visions of Life was accorded the Mercury Prize, one of the U.K. music industry’s most prestigious honors and the equivalent of a Grammy.  

Rowsell seems to take much of their success in stride. She also disputes the notion that their accomplishments equated to any sudden acceptance. 

“When you’re in your early 20s, even a year seems to be a really long time,” she suggests. “So it was like two years before we started touring around the country, and it felt quite long before we achieved any notice… Not in a bad way necessarily, but it wasn’t, ‘Boy, that was so quick.’ We played loads of shows and slugged it out across the country, so it didn’t feel like a sudden shoot to stardom or anything like that. I guess it does look like that from the outside perhaps, but we worked really hard with the touring and everything else.” 

If Rowsell seems somewhat nonchalant, it’s only because she and her bandmates are not only clearly confident, but also inclined to put things in perspective. 

“I was really young when we started, in my early 20s, and when you’re young, you don’t really think about things like that, like, ‘Oh, my God, we just got nominated for this or that or whatever,’” she suggests. “And I don’t really think about it much now. Maybe someday I will look back on it and sort of think, ‘Wow, we were pretty good. We did pretty well.’” 

Nevertheless, she also insists that their goals were modest, at least at first.

“My dream wasn’t ever to be some kind of huge superstar,” Rowsell maintains. “It was never like that. When we started, we didn’t even own any equipment or know how to properly play shows. We would just get on the bus with our guitars and go to the gig. It wasn’t like there was any special analysis involved. Early on, Joff and I didn’t know anyone who necessarily wanted to be in our band. We didn’t have any money to buy a van that could carry our equipment and take us out on tour. You just start with what you’ve got, and then hope that you’ll meet people and build things up from there. I don’t really see it as some sort of monumental change from what suddenly happened by going from a duo to a band and that kind of thing. It just seemed like it was kind of a natural transition once the resources became available.” 

With their new album, that confidence is still clear, although Wolf Alice clearly favor the spontaneous. “We never really like to have a game plan,” Rowsell demurs. “We just write songs until we feel that we have enough that we can choose from. If we can get together at least 10 songs or whatever, then we feel like we’re ready to make an album. We don’t pre-plan much really. We’ll talk about what we’ve been inspired by, but we won’t let that steer us in any one direction. We’re different people. We’ve all got different ideas. And it’s more fun that way. We just wait until we’re ready.” 

Indeed, that’s been the band’s mantra all along. “None of us wanted to do anything else,” Rowsell says. “It was more like, ‘Okay, we’re in this for the long haul and we need to drop everything else to do this.’ That was the idea that really stuck. We want to make something that’s better than anything that we’ve made before. So there’s always going to be that pressure. Maybe winning the Mercury Prize accentuated that pressure, but I also think that’s why we take our time, we don’t rush anything, because we’ve got to get it right. When something’s that important to you, you’ve got to feel that it’s being done right. So we’ll take time. The important things always take time. We want to write and record for as long as we want to. That’s our goal.”