wolf alice
The 50 Best Rock Bands Right Now
First, let’s take care of the obvious. Despite the still-persistent narrative that such music is “dead,” there are way more than 50 excellent rock bands out there. And there’s no exact science to scooping the cream of the crop. Our list includes arena-packing veterans but also semi-obscure indie acts who’ve barely escaped their basements. There are no hard rules here. Our methodology was simple: ask our writers and staff which rock bands feel worthy of recognition right now. But we did aim for a wide scope — throughout, you’ll find flavors of psych, post-punk, hardcore, metal, even country. If it feels like rock, it’s on the table. Consider SPIN‘s 2021 roundup — just like last year’s — a thermometer, taking the temperature of modern rock in all its various mutations. Altın Gün Ho...
How Wolf Alice Pulled Back to Surge Forward
As Ellie Rowsell unpacks “The Beach,” one of several climactic, holy-shit moments off her band’s new album Blue Weekend, she describes the song as “classic Wolf Alice, kind of.” What does that mean, “classic … kind of,” especially for an outfit known to never write the same song twice? It means whatever the hell you want it to, as Wolf Alice — perhaps the most acclaimed U.K. rock group of the last decade — have built their reputation on “kind of.” The foursome is kind of incendiary garage punk, kind of dreamy shoegaze, kind of crunchy grunge revival. Yet the product is exact in its singularity; no one kind of sounds like Wolf Alice (a rare feat for any guitar-forward act in 2021). The band’s last record, 2017’s Mercury Prize-winning Visions of a Life, was a master class in shifting dynamic...
Wolf Alice Announce New Album, Share ‘The Last Man on Earth’
Wolf Alice has shared “The Last Man On Earth,” the first single from their just-announced third album, Blue Weekend. The LP is due for release on June 11 via Dirty Hit/RCA Records. The tune is about “the arrogance of humans,” singer and guitarist Ellie Roswell said in a statement. “I’d just read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and I had written the line ‘Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god’ in my notes. But then I thought: ‘Uh, your peculiar travel suggestion isn’t a dancing lesson from god, it’s just a travel suggestion! Why does everything need to mean something more?’” The record was made while the British band stayed at an Airbnb in Somerset, U.K. There, they “cemented their friendship and set to work on some fledgling demos in a converted church,” Wolf Alic...
