The Clearing
may be
Wolf Alice
's first major-label album, but they remain resolutely independent. On their fourth full-length, they celebrate personal and creative freedom with grand gestures that, at this point in their career, they've more than earned. Frequently, this autonomy means defying expectations:
could probably make gauzy dream pop anthems forever, but with the help of producer
Greg Kurstin
, they trade
Blue Weekend
's clouds of guitars and synths for something more organic. Lavish strings and piano, fuzzed-out riffs, and brisk acoustic strumming take the lead, and it's as glorious to hear the band breathe new life into classic instrumentation as it was to hear them play with effects pedals and electronics before. Throughout
,
believe in the power of rock & roll to bring fantasies to life and reflect inner truths. Nowhere is this more apparent than on "Bloom Baby Bloom." A fierce, glittering manifesto that could be a collaboration between
Kate Bush
and
Heart
, it stomps and soars with the power of knowing one's own strength no matter what anyone else thinks. "I won't flower in spoiled earth,"
Ellie Rowsell
croons, leaving her disbelievers in the dust. While
echo the greats, the passion and excitement they bring to the album is theirs alone. On "Just Two Girls," they pair the airy heights of
ABBA
Olivia Newton-John
with a decidedly 21st century view of female friendship, and on "Bread Butter Tea Sugar," they make its bouncy glam rock groove and
Queen
-ly maximalism their own. The band still pack a punch when they strip things down, particularly on the juggernaut "White Horses," where
Rowsell
Joel Amey
trade vocals over a spellbinding motoric folk rhythm. Uniting all these moods is
, who's looser, more versatile, and more open than ever on
. There's a
Karen Carpenter
smoothness to her voice on "Safe in the World"; on "Midnight Song," she harks back to the heyday of British psych-folk with ease. Her lyrics have never felt as intimate as they do on "Play It Out," a meditation on maturity and acceptance that captures the urgency of living fully with vivid imagery like ¿Watch me build castles in the hourglass sand.¿ Its confessions are topped only by ¿The Sofa,¿ where lying down watching reruns doubles as a profound philosophical breakthrough. "Hope I can accept the wild thing in me/Hope nobody comes to tame her/And she can be free,"
sings, and as her reflections on weariness, dreams, and desire swell to epic proportions, they always sound completely genuine. The same can be said of
as a whole. A triumph of ambition and heart, each of its songs feels like an epiphany. Together, they form a portrait of a band growing into their status as one of the U.K.'s most vital acts. It's a thing of beauty to hear
bloom, baby, bloom. ~ Heather Phares