The retro-chic aesthetic of the artwork for Wolf Alice’s fourth studio album, The Clearing, is reflective of the music itself, which finds the English rock band adding the hazy, Laurel Canyon hues of early-‘70s folk to its already varied sonic palette. The sun-kissed elegance of a song like “Delicious Things,” from 2021’s Blue Weekend, serves as a blueprint for much of the album. But, crucially, the band retains its signature punch.
The album’s second track, “Bloom Baby Bloom,” revisits the anarchic approach to song structure that characterized much of Wolf Alice’s early output, when their songs often sounded like collages of disparate ideas. The track is an example of how contemporary rock can be reinvigorated by discarding conventional ideas about structure or tension and release. A raucous bridge inexplicably gives way to a dream-poppy chorus, with singer Ellie Rowsell’s voice jumping between the breathy and guttural, and some sing-talking in between.
More indicative of The Clearing’s sound as a whole, “Just Two Girls” is warm and nostalgic, a spiritual successor to 2017’s “Beautifully Unconventional,” from Visions of a Life. Rowsell pays tribute to a friend whose beauty and free-spirited nature she admires to the point of envy: “I was looking at her extensions/She looked so pretty it was fucking offensive.” But any bitterness evaporates by the time Rowsell gets to the joyous chorus, on which she proudly proclaims, “We’re just two girls at the bar/Like two kids in the park.”
After the first few tracks, The Clearing settles into a procession of mostly mellow songs built around acoustic guitars that nudge the album toward monotony. The two exceptions are “Bread Butter Tea Sugar,” which, with its chugging boogie-woogie rhythm, injects a glam-rock mischievous spirit into the proceedings, and the rollicking “White Horses.”
The droll “The Sofa” closes things out with some serene self-reflection, and it’s more insightful than the therapy-speak of opening track “Thorns,” on which Rowsell admits, “I must be a narcissist…maybe I’m a masochist.” With its smooth-jazz, string-laden arrangement, “The Sofa” is exceptionally light on its feet, but the singer’s frank lyrics—“I wanna settle down/Or to fall in love/And sometime I just want to fuck”—keeps the song from tipping over into easy listening.
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