Richard Brabin

Wolf Alice – Visions of a Life

Very quietly, in their deferential way, Wolf Alice have become a genuinely huge band. Playing a secret set at Reading this year had the whole festival engaged and sell out tours on top of sell out tours have made quaint little Wolf Alice a billboard band. Not bad for a group of musicians who began life as a folk inflected two piece, playing open mic nights and generally not navigating their way through the industry in any coherent manner.

Any smouldering possibility of them being a one album wonder fades quickly as Visions of a Life cascades and contorts through its opening numbers. There’s a Slowdive Goswell-esque nature to Ellie Roswell’s timbre and tone which seeps into their work and sumptuously caresses the listener to the point of therapeutic hedonism. It’s dark and light in equal measure, sometimes confrontational, occasionally comforting and twists and arcs in a most pleasing manner. It’s by no means flawless and the album falls a little into oblivion in the latter tracks but overall a resounding success for a band in incline not decline.

3 / 5