Wolf Alice's 'My Love Is Cool': A Sinister, Magical Journey

Oh my. Wolf Alice. I actually can't tell whether you're trying to terrify the life out of me or take me on a little trip down some rabbit hole on the way to Wonderland, but for a lot of 'My Love Is Cool' it's alternately scary and magical, and sometimes both at once.

From having vaguely heard their name once or twice to noticing them all over the place this week, this band are certainly getting a lot of attention with their debut album. Hype. And as I'm writing this, some lucky punters are posting their clips of Wolf Alice smashing their secret Glastonbury set.

In case you've missed the Wolf Alice chatter going on, let me fill you in, it's a guitar band with pure indie drums keeping a relentless indie-tastic beat, with a beautiful sounding vocalist. When I check their Twitter and Facebook pages it seems I’m a bit of a late arrival on this one, just a mere 40,000 Twitter followers and around 90,000 likers on Facebook...better late than never!

Wow is my initial reaction, I love what’s on offer here. The sweetness and the sinister combination is an absolute winner, as is the recurring two milliseconds of silence on track three “Your Loves Whore”. That is just an amazingly good use of a soundless pause and reminds me that the perfect song is framed with silence. At times I can’t quite tell where things are heading, especially so on track six “Silk” which builds and builds like someone trying to complete something, and is also one of the songs which features the mixture of wholesome purity and mild threat in an amazing way.

Other tracks that immediately grab me are “Swallowtail” which has a dreamy, floaty, kind of cloud-gazing on the hottest day of the decade kind of a feel, and the lovely “Bros” in which the singer manages to sound like an English cross between Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile. Quite unique lushness. “You’re A Germ” takes things to a pop-grunge level with great Nirvana-esque contrast between a softly, almost-whispered intro leading into loud, hard thrash. By the end of the song it’s even more intense with one of those sudden surprise endings.

Overall, it’s a fantastic debut, all very accomplished and this is a band that clearly knows what their sound and image are. Having listened a few times now I can safely say that terrifying magical sweetness is my newest favourite genre, and if you’re one of the very few who hasn’t heard it yet, I recommend you get a bit of Wolf Alice in your life.

To learn more about Wolf Alice, click here.

To visit the band's Facebook page, click here.

Words by Mary Long.

COMMENTS

• Emily Kyne
  One of the best rising UK bands for sure