Wolf Alice: How going back to basics allowed the band to bloom

Over the past twelve months, there’s not a tongue in music industry circles that hasn’t carried the name Wolf Alice.

The London rock four-piece have showered the headlines, stamped festival lineups, climbed the charts, and repeated their top dog title as Group of the Year at the prestigious 2026 BRIT Awards. It’s nothing new for the band who have been quietly building their status as distinguished music makers. Only now their name is higher on the bill and shining brighter and brighter as the band bloom into stars.

Keep connected to your live music scene here.

Forming as the full fledged outfit in 2012, Wolf Alice’s storied catalogue is a pristine portfolio of the band’s fluid yet distinct sonic skin. It is grounded by 2015’s effortlessly expansive entry My Love Is Cool; built by the ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ career definer, Visions of Life; cemented by the masterful makings of Blue Weekend; and decorated by last year’s celebrated stardom-sending The Clearing. From the outside, Wolf Alice have been flawless in their back to back delivery, but for the determined, driven, and impressively dedicated founding member, guitarist Joff Oddie, there is always room for improvement. 

“We’re constantly tweaking almost compulsively at this point but we’re perfectionist really and it is part and parcel of what we do and how we operate. We’re always thinking, “How do we make it a little bit better?”,” Oddie says.

Growth doesn’t necessarily equate to bigger and better for a band like Wolf Alice. Whilst they sit comfortably in the larger-than-life soundscapes that drive tracks like ‘Delicious Things’, ‘How Can I Make It Okay?’, ‘Silk’, ‘Planet Hunter’ or even the prog-power of ‘Giant Peach’, for The Clearing, Oddie and company opted for a less is more approach.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Wolf Alice (@wolfaliceband)

“Growth is always on the Wolf Alice agenda. We’re not an act that found a formula and plan on doing it to death if you know what I mean. We all want to grow and this album was an extension of that. We felt excited by focusing in on songwriting – it sounds like a strange thing to say because you’re in a band and that’s what you do – but focusing in on the core elements of those songs as a way to grow this time. I think we paid dividends. I think we learnt the more time you spend on the core elements of any creative idea, really, that if the core elements at the beginning and at the outset of the project are right and really strong, how you choose to dress them up becomes the connecting point,” he explains. 

Cinematic, ethereal, ambitious, and consummately crafted, Blue Weekend garnered critical praise and earned accolades a-plenty, but ever the critic, Oddie wanted to right some wrongs from the third album with The Clearing. The result is an album that allows songs to breathe. 

“I think Blue Weekend was very production-heavy in and of itself to certain songs, but I think there were certain points in that record that we were using production to cover up areas in which we hadn’t worked on the initial ideas enough. That’s something we can all be guilty of now with modern tech. There’s a lot of ways to cover up where you maybe hadn’t finished an idea properly. I think that was a lot of the learning for this record; honing in on the idea. Sometimes it feels like banging your head on a brick wall but if the initial idea is good then everything else that follows is just style, creative choices – it’s not fundamental.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Wolf Alice (@wolfaliceband)

It meant that songs like the gentle ‘Play It Out’, ‘Safe In The World’ and ‘Midnight Song’ stood on their own as piano and vocal driven pieces with Ellie in the spotlight, and bolder heroes like ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’, ‘Thorns’ and ‘The Sofa’ thrived from the expansive instrumentation. Oddie was happy to take the passenger seat at times in order to serve the song. 

“I think that comes with experience as well, learning when not to play,” he says. 

“For me and I know the other guys, it was about “what is the one thing you’re doing throughout. What’s the one focus?”. It’s an old school way of approaching being a musician and a band. It’s so much harder to have one idea. What is the one idea? Be succinct, make it have purpose and meaning and make it connect. That’s a lot harder. Being selective is tough.” 

The payoff has been huge and has set them up for the next chapter – one that is sure to continue the band’s unparalleled stardom trajectory and masterful music making.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Wolf Alice (@wolfaliceband)

Whilst Laneway audiences got a glimpse of The Clearing live at the top of February, Wolf Alice will be returning to Australia to bring their whole headline production performance to the Live At The Gardens stage at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. The special event is happening Saturday 5 December. 

Show information can be found here.