Gloriously unplayable in its unedited form on FCC-leashed terrestrial radio, Wolf Alice’s obscenity-laced single “Yuk Foo” — two minutes of sheer sonic battery acid —was the earliest taste of Visions of a Life, the London band’s second album.
Like Blur’s grungy riposte, “Song Two,” twenty years earlier, “Yuk Foo” is a thunderbolt: explosively satisfying and scathing. Wolf Alice’s frontwoman Ellie Rowsell rages through its all-too-brief storm with a sly dose of mordant humor too. But there’s always an unconventional, thoughtful layer to Wolf Alice’s songwriting. Even when Rowsell is pitched to furious gales and at her most tempestuous howl — as she is here — there’s a wistful slant to her vituperation, a deeper frustration with human behaviour and her vulnerable response to it.
The raw feelings stirred by “Yuk Foo” fits the messy emotional beauty of the album — Visions of a Life is a frank, dreamy and visionary follow-up to the group’s critically-praised, Mercury Prize-nominated debut, 2015’s My Love is Cool. In fact, Visions of a Life is a far stronger album, one that cements the exciting promise of this young band: singer and guitarist Rowsell, guitarist Joff Oddie, bassist Theo Ellis and drummer Joel Amey.
While it’s easy to seize on elements of grunge’s soft-to-heavy seesaw across the panoply of their sophomore album’s 12 tracks — and a preoccupation with mortality too — Wolf Alice is anything but formulaic. Visions of a Life is boldly tangential and surprising. The album’s second single, “Don’t Delete the Kisses,” is a hazy, half-spoken synthpop swirl of romantic longing and internal doubt, spurred on by a motorik beat (and distantly beholden to Father John Misty). “Planet Hunter” soars and swoons, gently brushed with clouds of mellotron and plangent guitar before it breaks open, like blinding sunlight, into a harder, grittier vista.
“Sadboy” is a four-minute epiphany that unfurls in multiple directions: a galloping rhythm section gives way to Rowsell’s double-tracked, sweetly delivered taunt: “What hurt you sad boy? You act like you’re already dead. But you think too much. Probably drink too much.”
But what begins as a straight-ahead guitar track takes an abrupt swing into an unexpected “Sadboy” stratosphere: anguished sotto voce recriminations, tattered screams elevated to gospel heights, and the reverberated tailwind of guitar. It’s a stunning song.
Posted from: https://wfuv.org/content/wolf-alice-0
